


Inconsistent Results

by imperfectkreis



Series: Witches and Warriors [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Bisexuality, F/F, F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-02-16 11:22:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2267895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectkreis/pseuds/imperfectkreis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Gap Year, Callie tries to level out her moods and fix the brain damage done to her by Benny and Wasteland hack doctors. They make plans to assume control of the Strip and the specter of Hoover Dam follows Callie and Benny through a series of separations and reunions as they each play their own game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Silly, Domestic

Her short, broken nails raked over the sides of Benny's chest leaving red welts crisscrossing his fading tattoos. His breath was short and hot against her shoulder where he had buried his face and as she scratched he would groan in response, pushing her further though she lacked the long, manicured nails some women of the Strip seemed to sport. What she lacked in femininity she made up for in ferociousness, pawing at him and using the strength in her arms and wrists to dig her way into him. In her dream he had been ripped open down the center and while it had been horrifying at the time, the idea of their fluids flowing back and forth now was exhilarating. It had been days now since the-girl-who-was-not-her had invaded her conscious thought; days since she worried about being Mint, but this clawing, tearing, biting instinct, it reeked of the Tribal girl Callie never technically was.

Benny was utterly buried in her already, pushing into her in long, controlled strokes. On occasion his resolve would flicker and he'd smash their hips together in a frantic way that confirmed the Tribal boy he just couldn't quite leave behind; a boy that grew up watching others rut against each other like animals in shared tents where eyes were always watching. He lost control again and his moans shifted to possessive growls. His legs moved further apart, forcing Callie to splay her legs for him, opening herself further to a situation that seemed insane but was undoubtedly the path she had chosen.

This time he didn't touch her anywhere other than his cock inside her and his hips between her legs, his mouth at her throat. Instead his hands gripped the bed sheets, curling and uncurling, threatening to tear. Callie's hands were everywhere though, pulling him apart from his sides, his back, his ass. Each hiss of pain that spiked between Benny's pleasured sounds made her a little bolder, feeling out how far she could push him.

Oh, but he fit into her so well, well enough that she burned as his faster thrusts stretched her less predictably. Maybe he was fighting back? The muscles of his back rolled under her palms and she dug in again, hoping to leave half-crescent nail marks and full-moon bruises. If she was his girl, the whole world would know it.

"Benny," she growled back, turning her head so she spoke directly into his ear. His cheeks were apple red with exertion and she wanted to bite. But that might be a step too far. It's not as if the "frigid" girl from the vault that was her reality had been entirely subsumed. "Fuck me, Benny." She let her head fall back against the pillow.

His pace slowed, angle changed, and it was just perfect. "Ah, ah, there…" Callie screwed her eyes shut. She could feel his smirk against her shoulder as his pace increased again. Over and over he pushed against the place inside her that he knew quite deftly before with his fingers. He may have only been teasing her before, making her crazy. Oh, but this felt so different, pressing against her not with his calloused index finger but with the head of his cock. It felt rounder, fuller, duller, but better. A slow building pressure instead of a firecracker.

Callie choked out his name again as she came. Her body wound impossibly tight before her muscles violently relaxed. Then she choked again, not words this time, but pleasured noises. Another growl in her ear and Benny pulled out of her, his semen splashing against her inner thighs and lower stomach. He sat back on his heels, panting and running a hand through his hair. He looked utterly spent.

"I'll go get something to clean you off."

"It's okay, I'll get up and shower in a minute, just lay with me?"

Benny looked relieved that he didn't have to make the short trip to the bathroom. Flopping down next to Callie, he threw his arm across her shoulders and she turned to face him, his semen ran over her thighs and started soaking into the sheets. The rest of it clung to her skin. It was kind of gross when she thought about it, but she didn't really mind, that much.

"Good?" It was a genuine question

"Yeah, Benny." If she would have let herself, Callie could have fallen asleep right there. But it was only three in the afternoon and Yes Man's installation process would be finished in less than twenty minutes. For now she was content to look back into Benny's eyes, a lighter brown than her own. He was clearly drowsy as well. The last few days had been a rush, and there were likely quite a few more to come.

"You wore me out, Callie," he dropped his hand to the small of her back, resting it just above the curve of her ass. His body radiated a heat that she was quickly becoming accustomed to. It was a pity to have to trade his warmth in for the heat of the shower, but she would have to momentarily.

When Benny's eyes finally drifted closed she scooted out of bed, immediately waking him in the process. Not very stealthy. He rolled over but didn't sit up. Awake or not, he was clearly exhausted. She actually didn't know if he slept at all the night before, or if he had stayed up to watch her during her attack, after their confrontation with Arcade.

Arcade.

No, she had to push that aside for now. She had consented to Benny's plan to get House's autodoc and try and repair the damage to her brain.

The hot water was pleasant, but not as pleasant as Benny's hands on her. She washed quickly with the hard bar of soap on the shelf, carefully avoiding getting her hair wet. When they first made it to the suite hours ago she had showered as well, washing away the dirt and vomit she had managed to get caked in. This was just so she didn't reek of sex the whole day, since getting the autodoc couldn't wait.

She didn't bother to get dressed, just wrapping a towel around herself and heading into the adjoining room where Yes Man's installation was finishing up. She didn't have any clothes of her own left, by which she meant clothes that she had stolen for herself, so she'd have to wear Benny's until some could be brought over. Earlier, after she had first showered, she went through Benny's drawers and found one stuffed with Mint's old clothes. Even if they hadn't been comically too small for her (how had that never rendered itself clearly in her stolen memories?), she couldn't have worn those.

The whirling of Yes Man's extremities functions coming back online after the reboot shook her away from the thoughts of Mint's drawer. The green screen on the Securitron's front flickered back over to Yes Man's smiling face.

"Why hello Pretty Lady Friend! Looks like your programs are finished installing, I actually feel pretty swell too."

Callie smiled, predictable robots were predictable. Yes Man's pre-programed cheer just oozed out of every word it spoke.

"I told you to call me Callie."

She pulled up the correct menu on her Pip-boy and disconnected it from Yes Man's short-range communications. "So nothing feels out of sorts? All your core processes functioning within rage?"

"Yep, yep."

"Good. So Benny told me that you two found an autodoc on House's network?"

"Sure did. From what I could tell it's a Mark III model. Media access control address is consistent with known late model autodocs. Besides, just takes common sense to figure that House would have a top-of-the-line medical robot seal into the Lucky 38 with him."

"You did good, Yes Man." She smiled, "you and Benny both."

"You flatter me too much." Benny's voice was behind her and in a few short seconds he was standing beside her. "That's a good look for you, Girlie."

She rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to Yes Man. "Okay, with the new programming Yes Man should be able to access all of House's systems, and I should be able to figure out how to replicate the programming on the Chip, but I've got to get more information about his set up. Only problem is, we'll still need to get Yes Man into the Lucky 38 in order for it to take control of the systems…"

"That's a firefight," Benny started. "You're not ready for that. Hell, don't even know if I want you involved in that part."

"I'm as good a shot as you." Callie narrowed her eyes.

"You said it yourself, you only want to be involved in the parts that are fun for you. I can handle Not-at-home when it comes to taking him out. But we need to get you fixed up first, we're on a schedule here." He tapped his bare foot against the floor. "If I go in now, it's a full on tango right from the get-go." He moved closer to Callie, but it didn't seem entirely intentional. "Plus, if I go in shooting, there's a chance I could damage the bot we need. We can't risk that."

"Well, I've got a personal invitation from House himself, he wants to talk to me."

"About what?"

"About what everyone else wants, control of the Mojave, some damn dam, shooting more ghouls into space, fuck there's probably a dozen other things. Point is, I can at least get in without a problem. Once I'm in, I can narrow down the location of the autodoc and I should be able to trick the system into never knowing it's gone."

"And how are you going to do that?" Benny's grin was a wide as the damn dam.

"What's that look about?"

"You've got that look in your eyes that you've got some great plan, that probably involves computers or getting into my pants."

Callie scoffed, "I do flatter you too much. But yes, it totally involves your penis."

"Knew it."

"So you've got all these scrap computer parts," Callie bent over next to Yes Man and picked up a small, dense computer tower. "It's pretty simple really, Yes Man has the MAC address of the autodoc, that's how it identified the autodoc in the first place. We have one of these machines clone that MAC, put it on House's network in place of the autodoc, I should be able to walk right out with it, no questions asked."

"But can't robots, well, see? They'll see you bot-napping one of their compatriots."

"Sure they have visual sensors, but security bots are likely to run a cross-check of all the machines on the network. People may believe what they see, but the bot will believe the data packet, if the autodoc MAC is still responding, they'll trust that over their visual sensors."

"You come up with all this just now?"

Yep."

"Ms. Callie is exceptionally talented as a robotics expert! She's much better than Ms. Ortal!"

"Thanks, Yes Man." She made a note to ask Yes Man more about 'Ms. Ortal.' Damn straight she was more talented.

"Do you need anything from me?" If Benny didn't understand the plan, he gave no indication.

"I won't know until I've sorted through the components that are here, but I'd be surprised if I do need anything. Uh, I suppose I could use a few more E-cells in case, and…another tin."

Benny nodded "Armor?" She had her pants but had left the top of her leather armor back in Jacobstown when she had bolted. The pants were kind of in rough shape too. Benny had ripped part of the zipper.

"No, don't want to raise more suspicion than I need to. Just some slacks and a top that will fit me will be fine. Oh! And shoes."

"Yeah, of course, I threw out the other ones," Callie had hurled on those…

"Size six if you can manage."

Benny looked at her feet and gave her a skeptical look.

"Oh, six in men's."

"Right, well, I suppose it will take some time for this cloning thing you're doing. I've got some calls to make. We may be moving ahead with getting this autodoc out intact first, but I want to be ready for taking the 38." He squeezed Callie's shoulder and kissed her briefly before leaving the room. It was so, silly, domestic. For all the desperation of their earlier sexual encounter, the kiss was familiar. She wouldn't yet admit that she liked it.

With Benny out of the room, Callie set to work on the compact computer tower, first opening it up to see what components were inside before assessing whether or not they worked. This one was missing a fan.

As she worked she asked Yes Man important questions in a casual manner.

"Tell me about Ms. Ortal."

"She is 5'4", slim in build, Caucasian, brown hair and blue eyes. Member of Followers of the Apocalypse. Moderate to advanced skill in robotics. Moderate to advanced skill with humans. Low skill with weaponry. She was looking for medical data from House's network."

What a reliable bot. Told Callie everything about the woman without touching at all on what she was actually interested in.

"Was she romantically involved with Benny?" Robots liked direct questions.

"Nope!"

"Did she want to be romantically involved with Benny? Did he want to be involved with her?" That would be a more difficult answer for Yes Man to produce, it would require a level of inference.

"No evidence to suggest that, Ms. Callie."

"Mmm." She found two fans, just for good measure and installed the one that looked to be in better shape. A full set of tools had been strewn across the room. A nice set. Either they belonged to Benny or Ms. Ortal had left in quite the rush. With the fan in place, she hooked the computer up to one of the available monitors that she already knew worked an hoped it would boot up.

"After taking control of the Securitrons, what's Benny's next step?"

"He plans on securing control of the Strip and consolidating the existing families under his control. Second, he wants to remove New California Republic influence from the immediate vicinity of the Strip and adjacent towns. While I have briefed him on both the presence of the Brotherhood of Steel and Caesar's Legion he was uninterested in their status at this time."

The little box came to life and Callie set to work. For now, it seemed to be in working order. It didn't pack much of a processing punch, and there didn't seem to be a way to verify how long it would actually stay running. It would help if she could find an extension cord in one of the boxes, in case AC outlets were not conveniently placed inside the Lucky 38. The computer didn't have to stay running for long, just long enough that she could get the autodoc back out of the building. Benny was probably right in planning for an assault on the casino ahead of time.

"Yes Man, can you read off that MAC for the autodoc?"

"Certainly! 00-1Alpha-1Echo-26-Charlie6-60."

"Anything else distinctive about that station table entry?" She typed away, creating the clone.

"Not that I can tell from here."

"Good job." With the clone complete, Callie shut down the unit, unplugging it from the wall and starting the search for an extension cord. "Did Benny tell you anything else about his plans?"

"He was concerned with gaining control of the Securitron's first. That's why he was so keen on getting me working."

"I suppose so. Okay, Yes Man, don't tell Benny I asked you these questions, okay? About Ms. Ortal or about his plans."

"Sure thing Pretty Lady Friend!"

Callie winced, Yes Man had preferences. Despite being instructed to call her Callie, he had reverted. That wasn't in any of the programming she had produced for him and most of what Ortal had done should have been erased or written over. The names preferences must have been stored somewhere else.

Her search for an extension cord was for naught and she was starting to get cold without any clothes on. Benny must have adjusted the climate controls. She didn't bother saying goodbye to Yes Man, she'd see it before leaving for the Lucky 38 anyway.

Back in the bedroom there were a few tshirts and slacks laid out on the bed for her, along with a pair of boots on the floor and a cardboard box of Mentats. Damn, they must have been all out of the tins. She popped a single Mentat and chased it with her water from earlier on the bedside table. A pair of gray slacks were just her size and she threw on two tshirts for good measure. In the vault she had always worn a bra, even though her breasts were small. They were just always available. Since leaving for the Wastes, it boiled down to if she had one or not. Her long-forgotten bag back at Old Mormon Fort had a couple in her size, but like hell she was going back for those. For fucks sake, she still hadn't worked up the courage to ask Benny what had happened with Arcade.

First one 9mm shot, then another. No laser. Had there been a third?

The Mentat started working and her vision sharpened. She would feel less vulnerable if she did have a bra. She should have asked Benny, but she hadn't, and clearly it hadn't occurred to him. Pulling on her socks and boots, she thought back to Mint's drawer. That drawer was bound to haunt her. Damn, it was going to be an awkward conversation to have with Benny if she was going to stay here. Was she going to stay here?

Fuck it. She opened the drawer and pulled out one of the bras. It was white and lacy and utterly feminine. And unlike everything else in the drawer, it was sizes too big. She stuffed it away and slammed it shut, causing the dresser to shake in protest.

"I'm going now, Yes Man." She crossed back through the office and grabbed the dummy box, tucking it under her arm. Remember, don't tell Benny what we talked about."

"Affirmative, and good luck!"

Her laser pistol and the E-cells she had asked for were sitting on the bar in the lounge area, along with two stimpaks she hadn't asked for. She threw the stims and cells into her pockets and clipped the pistol to her waistband before picking up the computer again.

Benny came back through the door before she could make her way out.

"Leaving without saying goodbye, I thought we were past this." He took her face between his hands and kissed her, first on the lips, then on the forehead. "I hate sending you there alone. If something happens to you."

"We agreed, this is the safest way, the bots will turn hostile if you come."

"That's not what I'm worried about. I know you're the robot wizard." He smiled and ran his thumb against her forehead. "I'm worried about this. About your having a fit alone in some megalomaniac's sanctum."

"I'll be fine, Benny. I know if I take too long you'll come in for me, hostile robot guards or not."

"You better believe it. How much time do you need so I don't crash the party too early."

"Give me three hours." Really, it should take her no more than fourth-five minutes. But Benny was likely to take that as a hard and fast deadline, rather than an optimistic suggestion.

"I'll have dinner waiting for you, then."

"Aw, thanks, honey." She pecked him again on the lips, that silly, familiar look that he got made her kind of silly too. She was out the door before he could make any more silly, familiar statements.


	2. Washington

Callie crossed the Strip with a quiet determination, not really for what she had set out to accomplish, but to accomplish it without devolving into a sputtering, blabbing, pool of puke and second-hand men's clothes. Even though Benny was very vocally hoping the autodoc would fix Callie's medical condition once and for all, and Callie was quietly hoping so as well, there were other, less chipper, possibilities to consider.

First, forcible removal of Mint's brain matter could cause her vital systems to just shut down. There was no way to tell exactly what parts of her brain had been damaged and subsequently replaced with Mint's tissues. Had Callie been thinking of self-preservation instead of self-destruction when she killed Dr. Henry, she might have bothered to swipe his files on her procedure before vaporizing him. No one would ever accuse her of having her priorities straight. There was absolutely no returning to Jacobstown at this point. Nope.

The second option was that she lived through the procedure, but that didn't mean her seizures improved. Hell, there was some outside chance that the surgery didn't even cause the seizures, that could have been purely Benny's bullet's doing, or there was even some slim chance that it was from a preexisting condition she hadn't yet remembered. They didn't actually have any evidence at all that surgery was going to fix her. This was sort of Benny's wild dream that she adopted as her own when she sort of, kind of, decided on living instead of dying.

As she became more and more herself, and less and less Mint, some memories had returned more clearly than others. There were still huge gaps in her history though. Her parents were entirely missing. So was anything that resembled childhood. In her mind, she sort of popped into vault life at sixteen.

She remembered the vault opening and leaving with one of the research teams headed by Valerie. She was eighteen or nineteen. Before the short, slightly overweight, doctor had been married off to the Overseer's tattoo-artist son a couple years earlier, Callie had eaten her out in the medical supply closet. When Valerie came she knocked over a box of unused syringes, scattering them around Callie, who knelt on the floor grinning like an idiot. She would later assign a maintenance bot to covertly clean up the mess.

And she remembered that her Mentats habit didn't have a whole lot to do with her introduction to Wasteland hospitality. It had more to do with the dimness of the vault and her lack of direction. By sixteen she was already branded abnormal by the vault's elite, just because she wouldn't let a boy whose name she couldn't recall climb on top of her after the spring dance. The Mentats made her so wired she forgot to be lonely, or angry, or anything at all. Maybe she would try and keep that one to herself. After the surgery she would make a good faith effort to stop. She promised.

Victor was in front of the Lucky 38, as expected, to greet her with automated cheer that could rival that of Yes Man's. She smiled back. It was hard not to like a happy robot.

"Welcome to the Lucky 38, Miss Washington!"

Callie recoiled. Of all the fucking names, the fuck. Another one that she responded to because it was hers, obviously it was hers, but she hadn't recalled it up to that point.

"Uh, Callie is fine."

"Sure thing, Callie. I've been told to show you straight up to Mr. House. He sure has been mighty keen to meet you."

"Likewise…" The computer tower was still tucked under her arm. While it wasn't particularly heavy, it was cumbersome and was still a pain to carry around and her arm was getting tired. Her annoyance with the box must have been really obvious.

"Where are my manners! We can make a quick stop in your suite first, if you'd like? I'm sure Mr. House could spare a minute more?"

"My suite?" Callie said incredulously, although Victor probably couldn't pick up on that. "No, no that's fine, let's go see him."

The interior of the 38 was spotlessly clean. The bots had cleaned it meticulously over the last 200 years, that was for sure, not letting dust settle into the upholstery or cloud the glasses and tumblers that lined the walls behind each bar. Sparkling, the whole place was sparkling. But for all its pristine exterior, it felt decaying, dead, empty, even as a robot worked in the corner, polishing an already shiny bartop. Maybe Callie had sort of gotten used to being around other people after all. Everything was a surface and nothing had any depth.

"Right this way, Callie. Up we go."

Callie moved into the elevator before Victor followed her. It was a little cramped, sharing shoulder room with such a wide robot. The Securitron series was versatile, that was for sure, but they were still sort of clumsy things. From what she had seen they were fairly sturdy and infinitely upgradable if one had the resources. She assumed House had the resources, which meant Benny would have the resources.

When they reached the penthouse floor Victor again stuck out its stubby articulated arm and gestured for her to exit first. Chivalry among the unalive.

Victor waited just outside the elevator door while she continued ahead, soon confronted with an unmoving image of House on a giant, dim monitor.

"Ah, Miss Callie Washington," that fucking name again. Like the whole world was mocking her for having not remembered something so banal as her own name. "A pleasure to finally meet you in the flesh. Victor has kept me abreast of your well-being."

Callie set the computer tower on the floor, she could already tell this guy was a talker.

"I've been kind of indisposed lately."

"Yes, yes," his pitch variation was haunting, not quite unnatural, but certainly forced and exaggerated. "I heard of your confrontation with the Legion. Taking out Caesar was quite the feat. Nearly in his own bed as well. Shame you were unable to obtain the Platinum Chip. Had you come to see me before your little world tour I could have stressed upon you the importance of recovering and installing that Chip. It appears to be lost now. One of those Legion fools likely mistook it for garbage. Ah well. I suppose I will have to make due…though I have already assigned a number of Securitrons to scour the area. Well, in any case, I have another task for you to carry out. Well, one step at a time. What say you?"

Callie cracked her neck. Forget about having another seizure, she was going into a fucking coma at this rate.

"I don't get what's in this for me. Everyone around here expects me to help out of the kindness of my heart."

"Caps, my dear Miss Washington, caps make the world go round."

She rolled her eyes. Still, for now, it was best to stay on his good side. Wrap up this conversation, get a little privacy, and start snooping around the network narrowing down the location of the autodoc. Later she could deal with House's smug ass. Or, better yet, kick back and let Benny deal with House's smug ass. He seemed way more into it than she did. She didn't have much of a reason to dislike House honestly, other than he treated her basically like everyone else did, as someone who could get things accomplished. You shoot one colony of ghouls into space and suddenly everyone thinks that you're hot shit.

"What do you need?"

"First and foremost, I need Benny Gecko eliminated."

She stifled a laugh. Either Victor was a terrible spy or House was a really poor judge of character, thinking that caps would be any sort of motivating factor for killing off Benny. Seriously? She hadn't quite figured out what was going on there, between her and Benny. And honestly, she was getting more and more okay with the idea of never really understanding it and just sort of having fun for an indefinite time period. But seriously, at this point even if she wasn't shacking up with him, she wouldn't kill Benny.

"I know that you have rather unlimited access to Mr. Gecko. It should be an easy task for you to complete and you'll be rewarded quite handsomely."

"Ok-ay" she exaggerated her vowel sounds and stifled her laughter, "anything else while I'm at it?"

"I will also need you to decimate the Brotherhood of Steel base. This should effectively destroy the Mojave chapter of the Brotherhood. They have been sneaking around my doorstep for far too long."

Any more of this and she wouldn't be able to keep her laughter inside any more. It just kept bubbling up in her gut. House, somewhat predictably, was completely disconnected from reality. Like hell she was going anywhere near the Brotherhood, although they bothered her now too, since they had clearly sent Veronica to keep tabs on her as some sort of science fair project. But it had been quite awhile since she had seen the scribe. Callie had lost her back at Old Mormon Fort and hadn't looked back. Arcade hadn't mentioned Veronica at all upon her return to the Followers base.

"That's going to cost you a lot of caps."

"I can more than deliver. Finally, this is all to the ends of pushing the NCR influence away from Strip affairs, and seizing control of the dam." That fucking dam seemed to be everyone's business around here. Fuck the dam. "But that can be a conversation for another time."

"Oh, I'm sure it will be. Let me get right on that eliminating Benny project and I'll be back at you."

Not a word about the Legion. Sure, she (or maybe Benny, neither of them were sure who had gotten him in the end) had killed Caesar, but that didn't mean his faction would just up and vanish. Surely they were still rooting around. And to be perfectly honest, they were the ones that troubled Callie the most. Seeing those women, those slaves being held in pens at Cottonwood and the Fort, it made her blood boil. If she had been a better woman, she would already be on her way to the Cove to finish what she had started and actually kill all those fucks. She was still too self-centered for that, and she knew it.

"I have prepared quarters for your use while you are under my employ. Complete killing Mr. Gecko and I can provide you additional equipment for assaulting the Brotherhood base."

"Sure thing."

"Victor will show you to your suite." Callie saluted, that might have been a bit much, and retrieved her computer from the floor.

But the idea of having a suite at the Lucky 38 was welcome. It meant she had a room with at least some level of privacy to work from in finding the autodoc. It shouldn't take long, but she wanted to do it out of the scrutinizing gaze of House and Victor. The former was more of an issue than the latter. Callie wasn't sure of the extent of House's sensory reach and his mind was very much human and active, if addled. House could put two and two together. Victor could be easily deceived.

Dutifully the robot showed her to her suite. It was massive, easily twice the size of Benny's at the Tops. Like the lobby, it was about the cleanest place she had seen since leaving the vault. It occurred to her that the Tops must have had a penthouse, just like the 38, but Benny hadn't taken the room as his own. He was on the same floor as Swank and a few other chairmen. Mint's room….Mint had her own room at first, for appearances sake, or maybe just a gesture of independence. But that drawer in Benny's dresser suggested that she had moved at some point.

She waved goodbye to Victor and switched on her Pip-boy screen. She hadn't activated the HUD for a while and left it of for the time being. She would need it later for sure, but it got in the way of her field of vision when working directly from the screen interface on her Pip-boy.

A few experienced clicks later and she had attached her Pip-boy to House's internal wireless network. She made her way into House's gateway interface and studied the station table entries. Locating the correct MAC, she made note of the switch the autodoc seemed to be connecting to. Fuck, there were a dozen switches and they were only labeled by number, no physical location information. Switch 6, port 2…she would have to actually find the gateway and figure out where each switch was located, maybe manually trace cables through the walls. She wished she had told Benny to hold off even longer. If the equipment was a rats' nest of cables it could take her hours just to figure out where everything went. All this and she didn't have a proper service kit.

Okay, it was likely that the network equipment would be somewhere on the first floor, maybe in a closet or something. In the vault, it had been on the reactor level. Classy place like this, it would be somewhere out of sight.

She rode the elevator down to the lobby and started poking around, ah! There was a door at the back, adjacent to one of the bars. It wasn't locked, not like that would have stopped her, locks were shit. In the back room was a computer, some filing cabinets, a safe, and another door. Looking good. Maybe if she had time she would hit up the safe.

The second door was locked and Callie turned her attention to the desk. She could lock pick it, sure. But it would speed things up if she just found the key. Sure enough, there was a thick custodian's ring with about two dozen keys on it. She eyeballed them and picked a couple of likely candidates given the size and general shape of the keyhole. The fourth one slid right in, clicked in the lock, and the handle turned.

A glorious sight met her. An equipment rack with the gateway, a dozen switches, and beautifully managed cables. Everything was tagged and tied off and organized. Benny wouldn't have to come in guns blazing after all. Small miracles. In neatly printed letters one of the switches read "switch 6 – penthouse/helipad." She could kiss the engineer who had taken the time to draw her a personal map to her supposed salvation. On the back of the unit, five of the eight ports were in use. Port 2 was labeled "AP PENT." Damnit. That meant the autodoc was probably connecting wirelessly. It could be anywhere up there. She'd have to take the risk and just go look. At least now she wouldn't be aimlessly wandering the floors.

She relocked the door on her way out of the MDF and gave a second glance at the safe. None of the keys on the ring looked the proper size but there had been a set of tools in the drawer as well. In the end, she did grab the screwdriver and a number of paperclips, but left the safe. It was best not to risk it and they could clear it out later.

Before heading to the penthouse she had to return to 'her' suite and pick up the tower. The penthouse probably posed a slight problem since House clearly had sensors installed. She had seen the station table entries for six visual sensors and three mics, all also on switch 6. There were others scattered around other switches as well. The question became how attentive was House to what went on around his sanctum and how much he cared about her rooting around. Also, did she become a sitting duck in the penthouse if something went wrong? Instinctively, she put her free hand on the laser at her waist. From what she could tell, Benny was hoping to keep as many Securitrons intact as he could. He would need them later.

She scanned 'her' suite one last time after retrieving the tower. Was it weird that she was staying in Benny's suite? Sure, they were sleeping together but that didn't necessarily mean he wanted her up in his space all the time. She wasn't quite sure what constituted a normal relationship, or even if this was supposed to be normal. Right, not normal. Benny hadn't said anything about her staying anywhere but his room, so she had to assume that was where he wanted her.

Upon reaching the penthouse Callie opted to put the tower down on the bar rather than lug it around in her search for the autodoc. House's monitor was off, though that didn't have any bearing on the audiovisual sensors. She could only hope that he wasn't monitoring her, or at least that she wouldn't raise suspicions.

A quick scan of the rooms didn't reveal the autodoc in any obvious location, though there were a number of closed doors in the penthouse, presumably leading to closets and bathrooms and secret chambers where one could hide the bodies. She flipped on her HUD and her vision was filled with bits and pieces of information. It was a bit much to hope the autodoc would show up. As a stationary bot that was probably idle, it was unlikely to generate a tic on her radar. There was something, a non-hostile, in the other room. It was moving of its own accord so it wouldn't be the autodoc, probably another maintainance bot. And then, quite faintly, a tick that seemed some distance away, absolutely still, but present in this zone. She left the HUD on, lest anyone try and sneak up on her.

First door, bathroom, no autodoc, no additional doors.

Second door, closet, full of outerwear that looked too crazy warm for Vegas. As far as she had learned the Mojave had always been hot, even before the bombs, whatever, no additional doors.

Third door, closet, damn, House must have been some sort of kinky bastard when he was alive. Best not be said what was behind door number three, no autodoc, no additional doors.

Fourth door, bedroom closet, full of expensive clothes and a rack of watches. Callie thought about if House might have been about her size. Clothes looked kind of right. Nice suits and crisp dress shirts. No autodoc and no additional doors.

Fifth door. Autodoc! All of its attachments were wrapped in sterilized paper. It hadn't been used and it looked as Benny had predicted, perfect condition. She scanned it looking at what was available. There was no diagnostic module. Likely House had the module on him to detect any malfunctions with his health. Callie would have to do without. Her Pip-boy had a rough diagnostic built in, but it had never detected a problem with her head. She wasn't overly familiar with how sophisticated the diagnostic modules normally were in these autodocs, only that the vault doctors had always prefered programming the autodocs themselves, suggesting that they weren't great. Callie hadn't gone the autodoc route before because she didn't have enough information about what had been plaguing her.

She had a little more insight now, but she still wasn't a doctor. She had basic first aid training and knew how to craft a number of standard medicines. But the time to consider the ramifications would have to come later. If the module was on the network, Yes Man would have told her. If it wasn't on the network, it could be anywhere in the building or nowhere at all. She couldn't risk looking for it now. They would figure something else out.

Backtracking to the bar, she retrieved the tower with the cloned mac and set to work. The tower didn't have a wireless card in it so she would have to find an ethernet hookup somewhere. This would change the port number potentially, but that shouldn't raise too many red flags with the bots.

Next to the nightstand was an electrical outlet and an ethernet jack. That would do nicely. First she booted up the machine. She didn't have a monitor so she counted off the startup time, waiting until she was sure the machine had fully booted. The ethernet cable would come next. This was where she had to be fast about things, getting the autodoc off the network quickly after putting the tower on.

Back at the autodoc she checked around for a switch to disable the wireless function. That would be quickest and easiest if she could find it. She ran her fingers along the surfaces looking for a toggle. Finding it, she double checked for the right icon and confident that it was for the wireless card, she wheeled the autodoc out of the closet and over to the bedside.

Here went nothing.

She snapped the ethernet cable into the back of the tower and turned her attention to her Pip-boy that had the gateway open. Once the tower had negotiated and she saw the cloned MAC, she toggled the autodoc off. It could take a moment for the drop off to be confirmed.

Part of her waited tensely, thinking that at any moment an alarm was about to go off, red lights strobing and pulsating noise. Her Pip-boy would go crazy and she'd be surrounded by hostiles. But there was nothing and the station table entry for the autodoc disappeared, leaving only the clone. She let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding in.

Pushing the autodoc ahead of her she made her way out of the bedroom and back towards the elevator. It would be even more cramped than it had been with Victor next to her. House's monitor was still off. There was no way he didn't see any of that if he had been looking. Maybe his attention was elsewhere. He was still human, after all. Even augmented by sensors and monitors, he probably could only 'be' in one place at a time, rather than splitting his attention. And considering he hadn't had many visitors over the years, it seemed unlikely that he would be in the penthouse very often. Then again, with a stranger in his sanctuary, he was bound to keep tabs on her, right?

It all seemed very suspicious as she made her way back down to the lobby and strolled right out onto the Strip without a peep from a single one of House's Securitrons.

Then there was Victor just outside.

"Come back soon, Miss Washington!"


	3. It's not Me. It's Never been Me

The autodoc stared her down, despite the fact it had no eyes, just great, long, spiderlike mechanical limbs wrapped in fine translucent paper. It mocked her with the promise of salvation.

Callie sighed and rolled over to her other side so she no longer faced the contraption. Her trip from the Lucky 38 back to the Tops was missing. She knew this was the Tops because the bedding smelled like Benny and like her and like sex. Also, the ceiling was the right color. Benny wasn't there, not in the bed and she couldn't hear him fussing in the other room. The panel to Yes Man's office was closed. He could be in there.

Sitting up, she stretched her hands over her head to work away the soreness. She was wearing a different shirt and no pants. Great, this could only mean she managed to puke up her guts, again, while her brain fried itself. Or her brain fried Mint's brain, something like that. At this rate, her fitness advantage over the other Wastelanders would be rapidly deteriorating. She thought of the ramifications of that. Was she a Waster now? Or did her residence in the Strip preclude her from that title? Was this a once-a-vaultie-always-a-vaultie situation?

The sudden, rapid introduction of her family name, from the mouths of bots and under-animated screens raised a host of additional questions. They were probably reasonable questions for someone coming out of do-or-die survival mode and turning to look towards a possible future. Did anyone else from Vault 3 make it out alive? They must have. She had heard the vault was full of raiders before she ever knew that it was her original home, that the residents had been slaughtered. But what about everyone else in the exploration teams?

Her bare feet hit the carpet and she made her way to the office door, swinging it open. Benny sat in one of the wheeled chairs, precariously tipping it backwards and his feet were on the desk in front of him. He spoke with Yes Man in quiet, but not hushed, tones. He was trying not to disturb her in the other room, rather than trying to hide something from her. When Callie entered the room his attention shifted immediately to her.

"Girlie," he crossed the room to meet her, burying his hand in the curls at the back of her neck. "Sorry to say, you missed dinner."

"I was out that long, huh?" Inside the suite, with no exterior windows, it was difficult to tell the time of day.

Benny glanced at his watch. "About six hours. Not too bad." Come on, you must be starved." He kissed her forehead and headed back towards the suite, abandoning whatever his conversation with Yes Man had been. Damn him and his normalcy. Everything seemed so easy for him, these little expressions of emotion tossed about in a casual manner, while still feeling utterly sincere.

Callie followed him out and settled down on the couch in the lounge, pulling a blanket over her legs. The room felt a little colder than she remembered. Benny called down to…well, wherever he called when he needed something done. He ordered what sounded like more food than she could possibly eat on her own. He may have failed to eat when she had her fit. No, he was more practical than that. He wouldn't skip meals just because she was business as usual. After he hung up, he joined her on the couch, throwing an arm over the backrest, not quite touching her.

"Food will be just a few minutes. So that autodoc," not a moment too much wasted before back to the main topic. "Looks in pretty good condition."

"Yeah," Callie fidgeted a bit under the blanket. "It's missing a diagnostic module, but everything else looks good." She hesitated before continuing, not really knowing if she wanted the answers to her next questions. She had a lot of questions like that. Arcade. "Where did I pass out? In front of the 38? That's the last thing I remember."

"No, the lobby here. Swank saw the whole thing." His face tightened. "I should have sent someone with you, even if I couldn't go myself."

"It's okay. I'm a big girl. Besides, this is supposed to fix me, right?"

"Girlie, I'd say I like you just the way you are, but we both know that's not true." He sighed and shifted towards her. At this close distance, she could see the lines at the corners of his eyes, the wrinkles developing and setting in his forehead. It occurred to Callie that she should have met him halfway and moved closer as well, reinforcing intimacy. But this time she couldn't will her body to move. Benny didn't seem particularly put out. "I know you don't need or want me hovering around you all the time like a mother hen. I also know you're not interested in tagging around me like a side-kick."

Callie vocally scoffed at the very idea.

"But right now, it's taking a hell of a lot of resolve to let you out of my sight because I know you might not be able to take care of yourself for a few hours at a time and it's because of my shit. Shit that I did."

They hadn't really discussed his/her accident in depth. Callie didn't think now would be the time either.

"But here's the thing, you are my girl now."

Okay, so every time he said that she kind of wanted to punch him in the face but she also kind of got a weird feeling in the pit of her stomach about wanting to jump him and kiss all over his face, so, the two impulses canceled each other out and it was a wash.

"I can't help but worry about you. And I'm ashamed in this case I could only get you a plan, and not just get the damn robot for you." With that he had said what he needed to, lit a cigarette, and let the silence settle between them.

"I'll get better." It was almost a whisper, but she actually said it with clarity and resolve.

There was a knock at the door and Benny got up to answer. It was the food. Now that she could see what he had called down for, it was clear that it was even too much for two people. But, like most of the food available in the Mojave, it was primarily prepackaged rations that would just go back into circulation if they didn't eat it. There were a couple of fresh items too.

"Come on," she started, grabbing a snack cake on her way to the bedroom. "I want to get a look at this autodoc."

Benny followed her after, raw barrel cactus fruit in hand.

Callie rolled the autodoc next to the bed so she could look at it while seated. Pulling back the thin plastic film from the display panel it was clear that this unit had never been used.

It occurred to her then that she had never disconnected her Pip-boy from House's network. She had intended to do so when she made it into the clear with the autodoc. She flipped through menus until she found the network connections panel. Rather than simply disconnect from House's internal network, she turned off the transmitter entirely. This would disconnect her from Yes Man as well. His expression of "personal" preference earlier had unnerved her, but she didn't have the time at the moment to investigate further. For now, she just took herself off the grid entirely.

Benny plopped down next to her on the bed and bit into the fruit. Callie turned her attention back to the autodoc and the problem of the missing diagnosis module. There was no way her Pip-boy could stand in for it. On the vital statistics screen, she was still displayed as the picture of perfect health, her hunger bar slowly filling as she absentmindedly took bites from the snack cake.

Benny wouldn't be much of a help on that front either. A shame since he had just expressed regret at not being able to help more. But it wasn't his fault. It wasn't as if Tribal life had prepared him for a career in medicine or the sciences. While he seemed to have first-aid experience, none of Mint's memories pointed to medical skill beyond covering wounds, basic medicinal plant knowledge, and lancing infections. Still, it was better to ask than assume Mint had showed her everything.

"You're not secretly a doctor, are you?" She toggled through various menus, scanning what each one did. There were literally dozens of slots for information that would tune the bot for specific problems. The level of precision was potentially amazing, provided it was assisted by a qualified doctor.

"I thought these things were supposed to be better than any doctor's hands?" The juice from the fruit had run down his hands, making them sticky.

"They still need to be told what to do. Remember, a piece is missing."

"I'd say we get you a doctor then, but I don't know any I trust. The Followers supply most of them around here…" his voice trailed off. "We're probably not on the best terms with Old Mormon Fort right now."

Questions she wasn't willing to ask quite yet, still on the tip of her tongue.

"Are you sure about this, Benny?" Instead of asking about Arcade, she went with another topic, one no less disturbing or potentially damaging, but one that couldn't wait. "This will kill off the last of her, you know. You lost her, only to get her back."

"Stop that," sticky fingers pressed against the back of her hand. "I told you before, I grieved for her. I accepted her death a long time ago. Yes, I was thrown for a loop when you came around saying that you were her, believing you were her. Hell, if it did make me remember. I'll grieve for her again if I have to. But I think that her brain is already dead in that skull of yours. You know who you are."

Callie fell backwards onto the bed with a thump, letting her legs still hang off the edge. "I still see you sometimes. You and her together. It doesn't feel like me anymore, because it's not me and it's not fair to pretend it was me. I don't know if I can take that away from you…"

And he was over her, pressing his lips against hers and straddling her hips. That crazy, unnatural heat he radiated was all around her again and she forgot the chill in the room. He kissed her over and over until she was quiet.

"No. By doing this, you're giving me the chance at a future with you. With Callie. That's the only thing you can give or take away that I want from you."

Her lips felt swollen as she spoke. "Okay."

They sat up again and Callie looked at a few more screens. Benny spoke largely to himself.

"We had a shaman, he might have known. Not about the autodoc, but maybe about the medicine part. He died last year though. He almost hadn't come with us to the Strip. For a while I thought I was going to have to kill him too. But he followed, they all did. He didn't take an apprentice though, part of leaving the old ways behind, I suppose."

He continued to fill the air with sweet, meaningless words that rumbled on while Callie tinkered and thought. She didn't have the best reputation with doctors, having killed two herself and then whatever had happened to Arcade, which ruled out the Followers.

But a bot was still a bot, and robots she understood. The autodoc's menus were a bit like a paint by numbers kit. There were blanks that needed to be filled in, but it would do the work on its own once it had those bits of information. The problem was, it wouldn't accept the command 'just look for all the brain matter that…doesn't match the other brain matter.' It needed precise technical terms. Clearly it wasn't really intended to replace a doctor; it reinforced some job security for medical professionals, at least in this iteration.

Callie knew a little medicine. She had trained a little bit in the vault even after her assignment to tend to the vault's robots. Those who were science minded often took to medicine as well, and it was best to have some emergency backups. That wasn't her primary skill though and it hadn't all come back to her. But she could do this, she had to do this. She just needed a little help. The other Pip-boy had medical texts, it had originally belonged to Mitchell. But that one was fried over a week ago and she had no idea what had become of it. The Followers probably had that too.

"I can do this." Her statement pierced the steady stream of Benny's rambling.

"Huh?"

"I can program the autodoc. I can. But I need help. I need a medical textbook. One that specializes in the nervous system if possible, but I'd take a general text too." She turned and looked at Benny. With a solid textbook, she could fill in the missing pieces of the procedure.

"Well I doubt we have one of those lying around. But like hell I'll let that stop us."

Callie got up to start packing what she would need for the trip. An abandoned library, or college, or hospital, any would do. Or maybe if she asked nicely to the NCR…

"Sit back down, Callie." He put a gentle hand on her sternum and pushed her back down on the bed. "I'll get that book for you, but you are staying on the Strip. You talk about how you hate when people expect you to do things for you, but then you try and take on responsibilities that don't need to be yours."

She opened her mouth to protest but no sound came out. Instead, she nodded. He was right. She couldn't go by herself and he was neck deep in planning further steps out. But he had also wanted to keep as few people as possible involved.

Even from the other room, she could make out his words as he called down. When he returned to the bedroom he offered her a hand up and pulled her against his chest. "Thank you, thank you for staying." She nodded into his shoulder. Words would come back to her eventually. For now she just had to accept her own weakness.

There was a knock at the door and Callie followed Benny into the lounge. On the other side of the door stood Swank, looking quite refined in his pressed suit and clean shirt-cuffs.

"Callie, tell Swank here what you need."

"I need a neurobiology or neurophysiology textbook, ideally. If not one of those, a general medical textbook, just make sure there's a chapter or two about the brain and nervous system." Her hands were shaking. The room was so cold.

"Anything else?"

"No, no that should be it."

Swank put his big hands on each of her shoulders and looked her right in the eyes. She could see his resemblance to Benny this way. Before it hadn't made itself that obvious. It was that funny sort of sincerity. "Trust me, I'll find this for you."

She nodded. She'd do this.

"I'd tell you to take supplies but you know what you're doing." Benny clapped Swank on the back as he showed his half-brother out of the suite. Callie couldn't keep her legs going any longer and crumpled up on the couch, pulling the blanket up over her chest, leaving only her head exposed.

Maybe a nap wouldn't be too bad.

Benny and Swank stood just on the other side of the threshold for several more minutes talking. At one point Benny laughed, then Swank laughed back. This was going to work out. Benny had slotted himself in next to her on the couch again, this time letting his arm drape over her shoulder.

"So what do I do now?"

"Whatever you want, Callie. Just don't go too far, in case." He pressed a kiss on the crown of her curls.

"In case. Right. I think I'd like to sleep for a bit."

"Mm, that sounds good."

Even in her half-awake state she felt Benny slip away, leaving her alone on the couch and heading back to the office and Yes Man.


	4. Before Sixteen

Callie woke on the couch in Benny's suite, still wearing the same clothes that she had remembered drifting off in; black tshirt, no pants. Good sign.

She had been tucked in, from neck to toes, and felt much warmer now. That chill certainly had little to do with the ambient air temperature. Fuck, new symptoms.

But Swank was on the case. They already had the autodoc safely recovered, no irate bots had come after her, or, at least, none of them had made it past the doorman downstairs. Swank could be trusted to deliver on the medical textbook. He was as true and loyal as Benny, at least Swank and Benny had always been loyal to each other, warm too. If Benny requested it of Swank, Swank would get it done. Callie knew she was tangential to that exchange.

She pulled her knees to her chest and resisted the urge to voluntarily fall back into Mint's memories. Part of her was concerned that they wouldn't be there anymore. "Her" last tie that would explain this weird affection for Benny would be gone and she would have to face facts that she was actually being completely irrational rather than being able to blame it on someone else. Part of her was worried that the memories were still present and she would continue to dip in and out of them like an affection-laced drug. Speaking of which.

Leaving the blanket behind, she returned to the bedroom and opened her bedside table drawer. Inside was her cardboard box of Mentats (apparently, she had exhausted the Wasteland's supply of tinned Mentats) and a note in Benny's scrawled excuse for handwriting. She palmed two of the pills and headed to the bathroom, taking the note with her. She didn't bother with a glass, bending over and drinking straight from the tap to wash the Mentats down. Only then did she turn her attention to Benny's note.

"Callie,

Don't worry, Girlie. I've got some ends that need tying up and some deals to hash. Don't worry. I'll be back. If not, or if your little heart is all pitter patter dead set on following me, bring a chaperone. Don't need the likes of you taking advantage of little old me.

Benny"

Alright, she had to learn to trust him. Besides, it wasn't as if the Legion could capture him again, right? He wouldn't be that fucking stupid a second time. Everyone but her seemed to think the Legion was a problem that had already been solved and could be shelved away.

She double checked Yes Man's office to make sure Benny wasn't already back in there, or maybe he hadn't actually left yet. The robot turned to face her and shouted. Securitron series only seemed to have shouting volume by default. Callie never remembered the robots in the vault being this loud.

"Howdy!" It's stubby arm waved at her. She was going to just turn and leave, but she didn't really have a whole lot going on at the moment. She had told Benny she wouldn't get herself into too much trouble. And if she did get into trouble, it would at least be close by. Besides, Yes Man was predictable, unlike some people. Er, actual people. Unlike people.

"Yes Man, let's talk."

"Sure thing, Pretty Lady Friend!"

Callie grabbed one of the chairs and swung it around so she could sit facing Yes Man's screen. Even though the face didn't change when it spoke, it still felt a little more engaging speaking to it's screen rather than having her back to it.

"Benny has given you priorities, yes?"

"Yeppers. A whole roadmap to his takeover and control of the Strip and surrounding communities. He's added oodles of information since yesterday, even."

"Did he ask for your input in prioritizing activities?"

"Nope! Said he had it all planned out. Just needed me for some execution of his plans. I do keep his calendar though!"

Shouting, always with the shouting and these Securitrons. "Okay, first, can I adjust your vocal response volume? Maybe drop it by twenty-five percent?"

"Sure thing, Pretty Lady Friend."

Ah, blissful to have it speaking at a normal volume for once. She would have to try this on Victor too if she had the chance. But then again, she didn't have unrestricted access to Victor's programming.

"Okay, now, looking at Benny's plans, is there an item you think should be prioritized that Benny hasn't gotten to yet?" She had to trust Benny's decision making over Yes Man's. Benny was real and warm and alive. He would care if she disregarded his plans. Yes Man wouldn't care. And besides, she wasn't supposed to prefer Yes Man over Benny. She didn't prefer Yes Man over Benny. In fact, Yes Man was increasingly creeping her out. Oh, and she wasn't supposed to care what happened in this little Mojave power play. The only problem was she was starting to care a little bit. She cared because Benny cared. And Benny, for whatever reason, cared about her. Vicious cycle, that one.

"Well, after you and Benny returned from Fortification Hill, he shelved everything to do with Caesar's Legion. Told me to cross them right off the list. That they were done for. But I have a sneaking suspicion that they are a tad more resilient than that."

Callie nodded. The Legion would probably end up being her own personal vendetta at some point, after she was well. Maybe, if the surgery worked, she would pack up some supplies and head out. The replacement code for the Chip would be her primary contribution to Benny's plans. There was still work to be done on that front, but she could work remotely from her Pip-boy and fuck up some Legion assholes too.

"Anything inside the Strip that needs to be taken care of?" Maybe she would find herself a little trouble. Just enough to keep her occupied.

"Benny has entries for both the White Glove Society and the Omertas. He wants to ensure that all the Strip families are loyal to the Chairmen, whether they like it or not."

"Ugh, that's politicking, isn't it?"

"Yep."

Well, it would at least give her something to do to check things out a little on the Strip. She had always been in and out, or mostly confined to Benny's suite. Other than her trip to the Lucky 38. The rest of the Strip was a bit of a mystery to her, particularly in its current state. Even if she didn't actually do anything about the other families, it wasn't as if she could actually fuck up Benny's plans. Benny's plans had a habit of going to shit on their own, even if he seemed to recover in the end.

"So this White Glove Society, they're in the Ultra Luxe, right?"

"Yep. Have a bit of a sketchy history, that group. Well, I suppose all the families do. But especially them, and the Omertas, and the Chairmen."

"That's all the Strip families, Yes Man."

"Yep."

"Yep." Callie rolled her eyes, not that Yes Man would understand that. "Okay, I'm going to the Ultra Luxe then. If Benny comes back, let him know."

"Sure thing, Pretty Lady."

The name thing was absolutely hopeless at this point. She'd have to find where that setting was, but right now she needed a drink. And pants, she needed pants.

Before she had left for the Lucky 38, Benny had laid out a bunch of clothes in her approximate size, but they had all been put away now. There was only the one dresser, so she started going through the drawers, avoiding the one that held Mint's things.

All of it looked kind of similar to what she saw. But she mostly wore men's clothes so that was to be expected. She and Benny were pretty similar in size, so it wasn't like it was easily discernable what was intended for her and what was his. She should have just thrown on a pair of his slacks and called it a day, but of course she had to give in to that part of her that was utterly tortured and look in that drawer.

This was the third fucking time she was drawn to that fucking drawer.

She was even angry as she opened it and found it full of the clothes intended for her. It felt somehow like a betrayal of the dead girl. How dare she, of all people, replace someone who had clearly been so special to Benny? He had told her this was the way things were, that you love and then you grieve and then you can love again. She saw some truth in the statement, she supposed. But her affections had never really gotten that far. And this was too much, literally occupying the same space that Mint once had. It was a concretization of her anxiety. Right, Mint was literally in her head too.

Still, she needed the damn pants. She pulled out a pair from the back and put them on. From the looks of it, all of Mint's things were gone. The pretty dresses and lacy undergarments and the little sachet that smelled like a flower but Callie didn't know what one. They didn't have flowers in the vault. But they did have girls in pretty dresses and straight hair that were desirable and loved, even if that love was assigned to them.

Now the drawer was full of soft, broken in tshirts, slacks and a pair of jeans. A leather belt, fuck he had been thinking of her specifically, maybe. Getting a leather belt but no bras. It was kind of absurd.

She pulled the belt through the loops of the slacks, tightening it around her waist where previously she had relied on her hips to keep everything from falling off. She left on the same shirt, it felt and smelled clean yet. Since she was going to a place called the Ultra Luxe she might as well try to look a bit more upscale. There were a couple of dress shirts in the drawer too. They were darted on the side. They were women's dress shirts. She put on a white one with blue stripes and left the buttons undone.

Down in the lobby she waved goodbye to the doorman who wasn't Swank and realized it would probably be in her best interest to start learning people's names. It was one of those things about transitioning back into life. She had to start treating people like people, as if they were important and she'd see them again. Even if they weren't important, she couldn't just haunt around the Strip as if she were a ghost. It was hard though, thinking about the fact there would be more than just tomorrow. There would be lots of days, maybe even years ahead of her. Even in the vault she hadn't really thought that way. She was never really attached to people.

Two NCR soldiers on leave were stripped down to their bras and underwear frolicking in the fountain in front of the Ultra Luxe. They giggled with drunkenness and splashed water at each other, wetting their hair. Callie watched as the water ran down over the curve of their breasts and clung in little droplets to their hips and thighs. Yeah, she was oogling. Her and a half dozen men cheering the scene on.

Right, she was supposed to be here to learn something about the White Glove Society, not stare at breasts. They were nice breasts though. Really really nice. Urg, well that definitely answered the question if she still liked women.

All of this sex with Benny thing had been a little bit of a mystery to her as she regained her memories. There were absolutely no men for her in the vault, only women. Her unwillingness to submit to men sexually had been one of the things that lead to her ostracization from vault society. Girls were getting married at seventeen and eighteen. Kids became sexually active a couple of years before that. But she had just hated the idea of it. She hated the idea of their huge hands and hairy chests, and their cocks. She had really not liked the idea of that part.

Under the influence of Mint she had absolutely craved Benny though. But less and less she could use that as an excuse. Besides, when she saw Arcade for the first time after the shooting, she had that very visceral memory of wanting him, even though, obviously, their relationship had never turned that kind of intimate. Arcade got her hot and bothered when no other man ever had. And that was all her, that was Callie.

And now Arcade was dead. She had to accept it. Arcade was dead and it was her fault. If she had been better at talking to people, more persuasive, she could have convinced him to walk away. Fuck, it had been her idea in the first place that he chased her across the Mojave in her self-destructive death sprint. And now Benny had killed Arcade like he tried to kill her. Fuck, it was so easy to forget the murdering part when he was placing those soft kisses to her forehead and lips. But it wasn't like her hands were any cleaner.

At the entrance to the Ultra Luxe she was instructed to hand over her weapon. Right, it hadn't occurred to her that while she was a fucking princess at the Tops and the Lucky 38, no one here owed her any allegiance. Now she wished that she brought a switchblade or something else easily concealable with her. Too late now. She slid her laser pistol across the counter and the greeter eyed her Pip-boy suspiciously.

"It doesn't come off. And it's not a weapon."

He didn't look entirely convinced, but he nodded his sandy-blonde head and let her continue in. Without fail that 'it doesn't come off' line always worked.

Moving from the entryway into the lobby it occurred to Callie that she was woefully underdressed compared to most everyone else. The men wore tuxes and the women pretty dressed like Mint would have (but none of them purple). The members of the White Glove Society had delicate half-masks hiding their features from view, making their noses perfectly straight and concealing the lines around their eyes.

She slid up to the circular bar in the center of the room, not really knowing where to start. She had come looking for a way to be helpful and to ward off cabin-fever but she didn't exactly have a plan here.

"Just vodka, in a glass." She winced, how else would she want it, poured over her head? The bartender smiled though, despite the awkward phrasing of her request. His pink lips twitched while the rest of his face was unreadable. He placed the glass of vodka in front of her on a delicate napkin. Disposable things like that seemed so odd to her, even now.

Around the curve of the bar sat an older man in a worn looking brown suit and a cowboy hat. A larger man loomed over him silently, his eyes scanning the room and his body twitching at every unexpected sound. Highly strung that one. Callie averted her eyes when it became clear that she had looked too long.

She tried her best to listen to the ambient noise of the casino floor, seeing if she could pick up on anything interesting. Women's laughter sparkled through her ears and the smooth lower tones of men offering them hours of good time. The White Glove Society members said little, moving around the floor and filling drinks, offering sweets and little delicacies.

"You don't look much like a regular."

Callie swiveled on her barstool and was face to face with the older man. He hadn't really snuck up on her, but she hadn't been alert to physical proximity. She was probably safe here. Even if members of the Society had a rough idea of who she was, and there wasn't really reason to think anyone other than House knew her association with Benny, they wouldn't be so bold as to try and off her or something.

"No, no, just taking in the scenery." The last bit of the vodka had warmed a bit and it burned going down, leaving a pleasant feeling down the length of her throat.

The old man gestured at the bartender to bring her another.

"You look like a woman who could get a job done, for the right amount of caps."

Oh hell no. This shit again. She couldn't help the way her face contorted. And since this man was actually a human, he could read nonverbal cues just fine.

"Woah, woah," he threw up his hands to deflect guilt. "I'm a married man. I didn't mean that kind of job." He gestured to the Pip-boy on her wrist. "Only two types of people have those. Vault-dwellers and people who kill vault-dwellers. Since you're not a soft looking kid laying face first in a ditch, I'd assume the latter?"

What? Was that the reputation of vaulties? Because everything in her experience had been just the opposite. She was assumed to be more capable than everyone else around her. But was that because they assumed she had been murdering vaulties and stealing their stuff? Okay, so technically she did kill someone to get her Pip-boy back, and that person she murdered for it had come from a vault. So it was complicated.

She grunted in reply, rather than clue in this stranger to her very weird last few weeks.

"The name's Gunderson, Heck Gunderson." He offered his hand and she shook it out of politeness. She supposed that meant she had to offer a name too.

"Callie Wa...just Callie is fine." It wasn't that she was afraid to speak her own name. Not really, but she hadn't even had the chance yet to tell Benny her family name. And that seemed weird, letting it fall for the first time to a stranger and not Benny. When he got back from whatever he was doing, she would tell him.

"Truth is Miss Callie, my boy has gone missing and I'm not getting anywhere with these creeps who run the place. No one has heard a peep from the boy and he's just too dumb to not attract attention." He took a sip from the amber liquid in his glass and a drag from his cigar. "Don't get me wrong, they're good for the caps, these White Gloves, but that doesn't mean they don't give me the heeby-jeebys."

Callie ran her finger along the edge of her full vodka glass until it surprised her with a squeak.

"I'm an important man, and there are those likely to take advantage of my boy. Ted, I don't know where that boy went wrong. His mother is too soft with him." He shook his head. Clearly this guy was at the end of his rope, seeking help from some stranger he knew nothing about. There was a lot of that going around.

Callie put her hand on his shoulder and stood up, leaving the mostly-full glass of vodka behind. "I'm not the person for this, but I hope you find your son." She hoped she sounded like she kind of cared, but she mostly didn't People died all the time. Nowhere was safe, no amount of money or prestige. Even her own position was precarious.

It wasn't really as if she could wander aimlessly, so she moved with purposeful strides to the back of the casino floor following the signs for "the Gourmand."

A distinguished looking woman looking to be in her early 50s stood at the entrance to the restaurant and offered Callie a warm smile. She didn't wear a half-mask like the others and that instantly made her more approachable. The soft lines of her face suggested she may have been quite pretty when she was younger. She was kind of pretty now too.

"Why hello. You seem a little underdressed for service. Perhaps you wouldn't mind putting on something a little more appropriate before attending dinner?" Her sweet tone prevented the statement from being overly condescending. Besides, Callie had no intention of eating. "Not that I'm judging you for your choice of attire in the abstract. Only we do maintain a dress code at the Gourmand. A sanctuary of luxury to melt away the roughness of the world outside."

"Oh, sorry. I wasn't really planning on eating. Er, there was just this man at the bar and I didn't want to…"

"Ah, say no more!" She drew her thin lips into a half-smile. "We're between meals at the moment and a bit slow. Just talk to me and he won't bother you one bit. Girls these days though. Why, wouldn't I love to dress you up. You have such lovely hair."

Callie actually blushed a little bit. At least her cheeks felt warm. Having this stranger dote on her like a mother was a little weird, but also kind of nice. Besides, no one ever said they liked her hair. The woman reached out to one of her loose curls and pulled it a little, watching it bounce back up into its original shape.

There was a memory there. One from her childhood, before sixteen. The boy who sat behind her in lessons pulling her curls and giggling until she turned around and decked him in the face. She was seven, maybe eight at most. The teacher called her mother and the boy's. He never sat behind her again.

And there she was. Callie's mother who had been missing from her memories for so long. She had pale skin and straight hair and blue eyes. None of these things Callie had. And there was a jealousy deep in her, even then, that her mother was pretty and she wasn't. Her mother told Callie that this only happened because the boy liked her and with all the audacity and certainty of a child Callie swore she would never like boys, never ever ever ever. The next day she went to class in braids.

"Oh, dear! I've been so rude." The woman in front of her looked honestly mortified. Callie was kind of mortified too, but at least the memory hadn't resulted into another lapse or fit. She just sort of zoned out for a minute. "I shouldn't have done that at all. I apologize. My name is Marjorie and I hope you can forgive me."

"No, no, that's okay. I'm sorry if I worried you. I haven't been quite myself lately." That was kind of true. "I'm Callie." She offered her hand and Marjorie shook it between both of hers.

"Dear is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?"

"Guess I'm just a little lonely...but not for the kind of attention he was offering."

"Of course not, well then, other than some presumptuous gentlemen, have you been enjoying your time at the Ultra Luxe?"

"Yeah," That was it, if she kept talking she would seem like a normal person. "it's all...luxurious."

"The world outside can be harsh and uninviting. We strive to provide a refuge for those of sophistication. I know our reputation has not always been spotless, but that's in the past now. Likewise, while we hope to cultivate finer tastes, it need not be established through breeding, but rather learning." Not only was she a sweet woman, she was a salesperson through and through, that was for sure.

"Oh? I actually don't know a lot about the families' histories. I've only recently come to the Strip."

"Well, the past is the past. While we may have been savage Tribals, I must say we have quite acclimated into respectable members of the community. We pride ourselves on being the finest establishment on the Strip."

"I've been to the Tops. I like it there too."

Marjorie scoffed. "You better be careful around those boys. They act like gentlemen but they still have a wild streak to them."

She could say that again. Callie had the bruises on her hips to attest.

"Let me tell you something about how far we've come here. You know, some in our tribe used to practice cannibalism? Dreadful. At first, you justify it as a means of survival. But it's not. That's no way to go on being human."

Now she was just spilling information out that Callie had no business knowing. Did Benny know this? They had all been Tribals at the same time, so maybe he did. It could have been an open secret around the Strip. Still, she felt like she had touched upon something useful.

"We've changed though, really and truly. The other families might still dabble in the old ways, but we've overcome our obstacles and I'm proud of my brothers and sisters, in their resolve."

"Hey, um, so someone was mentioning his son went missing. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"Another one? Our reputation." Marjorie brought her hands to her face, careful still not to smudge her makeup.

"Another one? This happened before?"

"A bride, set to be married the next day. She got cold feet is all. But now there is an investigator looking into the situation, bothering our guests." She brought a well-manicured finger to her mouth and bit down on it. "Oh, this isn't to trouble you, dear."

"I can understand cold feet. This is a man though, and his father didn't say anything about a wedding."

"This is New Vegas, young men and women do all sorts of things their parents do not want for them. Some of these children, the ones that come from means, have been so sheltered they go a little wild when they come here. That's all there is to it."

Callie nodded, there really wasn't an elegant way to extract herself from this conversation, but she wanted out. If only for a moment. This was definitely a lead or two on how to get the White Glove Society on their side. Benny maybe knew the cannibal thing, but these disappearances were new. Maybe people went missing all the time, but maybe if they could find the girl and Ted Gunderson, the Society would owe them one when the time came.

"I was kind of sheltered too, I guess." She raised her right hand with the Pip-boy to emphasize her point, like it spoke for itself, although Heck had made it clear there were multiple interpretations of the device.

"Well, you, dear, take care of yourself. And stay away from those Chairmen boys. They'll only take advantage of a sweet girl like you."

Callie squeezed Marjorie's hand one last time. "I'll visit again, if that's okay?"

"Yes. And do wear something nice, you must try the Brahmin veal. It will be on the house. But I can't bend the dress code, even for you."

"I'll do my best."

Callie headed back towards the exit, careful to avoid any sort of eye contact with Heck Gunderson, lest he get the wrong idea that she gave a fuck.

She retrieved her laser from the doorman and thanked him. Those masks were really awful. Outside the NCR women had departed and the crowd dispersed. The sun was beginning to set.

Swank was still missing from the front desk but the greeter waved her on through. Even if she didn't know their names, all of them seemed to know her already. Rather than just rush by him she actually took a moment to stop.

"Hey, I'm Callie."

"I know." He looked a little nervous. Was she scary or some shit? Or was it because she was with Benny so they had to act like she was important, or off limits?

"Er, what's your name?"

"Buck."

"Nice to meet you, Buck. I'll see you around." Well, that was awkward.

She rode the elevator to the 13th floor alone. While she hadn't been gone that long, she was hoping Benny would be back by now, that he didn't worry and she didn't worry and this didn't end with them wading through the Colorado or any other major river this time.

Before she had left for the Ultra Luxe she had locked the door behind her, but she didn't actually have a key to get back in, crap. Maybe she didn't actually live here after all? Swank was out too, which meant a repeat awkward performance from Buck. She tried her luck with knocking.

"Coming."

Thank fuck, Benny's voice came from the other side of the door.

The door swung open and Benny stood in the frame, his shirt cuffs rolled up to his elbows showing off the tattoos on his forearms.

"Girlie," one of those casual kisses. "Missed you." He managed to get his arms around her waist and pull her into the suite and against his chest. His mouth went right for her ear, then her neck and she mewled despite herself. "I was worried, but I'm glad you're safe."

"I only went to the Ultra Luxe."

"Yeah, what were you doing with those cats? We're not on the best terms."

"Yes Man said you were looking for a way to control them. Figured I could do a little recon, since I'm not really recognized around here."

"I'd make sure the whole world knew you were my girl if that's what you wanted. Didn't think it was though."

"No, not yet at least." Callie sat down on the arm of the couch and Benny sank down next to her on the cushion.

"Come here, I can still show you that I'm yours." He pulled her down into his lap and started pawing at her again, sneaking his hands under her tshirt and massaging her breasts, squeezing them together and teasing the nipples. Even though she wasn't really doing much for him, other than grinding against his leg, he had a wicked smile on his face. "You're the best, Girlie."

"Mm, there's something I want to tell you. About myself." Her arms were wrapped around his shoulders, giving her leverage to thrust herself against him. Too much clothing, but it was kind of erotic moving against each other through the barrier of their clothes. They had moved to fucking so fast they sort of skipped the heavy petting stage.

"Oh and what's that?" He stopped fondling her breasts and instead rolled his hands up and down her back, dipping into the waistband of her slacks, though the belt provided more resistance than he was used to encountering.

"My family name is Washington. Callie Washington. That's the first time I've said it out loud in a long time."

"Well, it won't be for much longer if I get my way."

Oh.


	5. And they say Romance is Dead

Callie was back in the Ultra Luxe nursing her glass of vodka, this time in a corner and out of the line of sight of Heck Gunderson. The vodka was warming in her glass as she kept her hand curled around it. She wasn't exactly keen on helping Gunderson, but she also wasn't keen on the idea of doing nothing all day. Swank had been gone for a solid twenty-four hours and she was starting to get nervous about the whole thing. If something were to happen to Swank she would never forgive herself. Benny would probably never forgive her either.

Benny had a private meeting with the Omertas scheduled for today and while he invited Callie along, honestly she was more comfortable keeping her distance at this point. He had freaked the fuck out of her last night. She had just sort of shut down when he said that thing. Being that weirdly-perfect murdering gentleman that he was, he had become quite concerned, asked her if she felt a fit coming on, and doted on her until she faked sleep. But she had learned well enough that Benny wasn't an idiot when it came to reading people. Hell, he considered it one of his finer skills. He just knew to avoid the subject, at least for now. Callie wanted to avoid him, at least for now.

She had sort of taken Marjorie's suggestion to heart and she wore nicer black dress slacks, actually bothered to button up her dress shirt, and carried a matching suit jacket over her arm. So she didn't put on a dress, at least she matched one gender's dress codes for dinner. That was a start. Dinner wasn't actually the reason she was here though. The disappearances did strike her as a little suspicious, or rather, she wanted them to be suspicious. If there was something there she could provide more leverage to Benny. Besides she would go absolutely nuts if she didn't get out of the suite. Funny, spend your entire life in a vault, all cooped up, and then suddenly the whole world seems so small when you finally do get out. The world beyond the Mojave was only a rumor as far as it concerned her.

Mortimer was the current object of her surveillance. Of all the creeps at the Ultra Luxe he was certainly the creepiest. That was quite the accomplishment. Maybe she should start handing out medals. Marjorie had expressed some distrust regarding him and his subtle power-plays to gain control of the White Glove Society. It was as good of a lead as any, but thus far he hadn't actually done anything suspicious. Being a creeper wasn't criminal. He treated patrons in a cool, professional manner, with none of the enthusiasm Callie felt from Marjorie. While she sat out of earshot, she carefully observed the body language of each interaction, hoping for something out of the ordinary. Any sort of confrontation would do at this point.

Obviously this was getting nowhere. She would be better off talking to Mortimer directly at this rate. But she didn't really have much to go on. 'Hey, I heard you used to eat people, so…how'd that go for you?' Yeah, brilliant. Real charismatic. Maybe he was secretly a robot? That would have been awesome on a few different levels, but unlikely. All those rumors about androids but Callie had never actually seen one. But, then again, the point of an android is that she wouldn't know one if she saw one.

With her vodka done she slid off the barstool and headed over to the reception desk. She'd just have to wing it and hope she didn't mess up too badly. Maybe if she pretended she was Benny it would work. Pretending to have that kind of speech skill might actually translate into not performing like an idiot. Yeah, maybe it just was about confidence.

Or maybe if she pretended she was speaking to a robot? Yeah, that could work.

"Hello." She waved and made her face unequivocally bright. "Marjorie told me there was an investigator about. I was hoping he could help me with a problem I'm having."

Her smile probably looked fake and weird, but Mortimer was too much of a professional to let on that she looked like a nutcase.

"Hm, yes. He is still checked in according to my records, but I have yet to see him this afternoon."

"Well, it's important, I could stop by his room."

"We are not in the habit of giving out guest information. Many of our patrons value discretion." There was the barest hint of a snarl on his lips.

"It's really important. And as an investigator, I'm sure he's looking for work." Batting eyelashes, that was a thing women did to get their way, right? She thought back to the pretty girls in short skirts in her holovids and thought of how to replicate charm without taking off her clothes.

Mortimer sighed in apparent exasperation. "He is on the fourth floor, room 418. He did seem a rather, exuberant individual."

"Thanks." She turned away quickly. The guy really was a creeper. His eyes looked, well, strange. It was as if he was appraising her through her clothes. While she had been out in the Wastes for a bit now, and had gotten some attention from people, after all, she looked fairly different from them. But before she hadn't felt so much like prey.

The elevator walls were covered in mirrors that infinitely refracted her image back at her. She rode up alone and retied her ponytail. It always started drooping after a few hours. Maybe she needed to cut her hair. A ding denoted she had reached the correct floor.

Once she found herself in front of the correct door she knocked sharply. When no response came from the other side she assessed her options. Either she could walk away empty handed, or she could pick the lock. Yeah, lock picking it was. This was maybe even better. She took a quick look around, got down on one knee, and took a look at the lock. She wasn't really looking forward to meeting with the investigator, but hopefully she would be able to glean some information from his notes or something similar. Before she started on the lock, she toggled her HUD on, in case the investigator decided to show back up she would get some warning and maybe she could hide in a closet or something. Callie Washington, super spy. Yeah.

She had both a bobby pin and a mini-screwdriver in her pants pocket and was able to make short work of the lock's pins. Satisfyingly, they clicked into place one after another. She stood and turned the handle.

Fuck.

That was one dead investigator. The left side of his face had been beaten in, blood and skull fragments had pooled on his shoulder and dribbled onto the floor beside him. His jaw was slack and his eyes open, staring ahead into nothing. This did not bode well.

Callie closed the door behind her. It wasn't as if dead bodies freaked her out, they were kind of par for the course by now. Besides, she had to find something in the way of clues, even better if it implicated the Society. Turned out her feeling had been right. Something was amiss here. The scene before her was pretty bad for the Ultra Luxe's reputation, even if the Society hadn't been directly involved in the murder.

The room had been turned over, clearly someone else had been canvassing for something as well. All the drawers had been ripped out of the dresser and the investigator's suitcases emptied onto the floor. The likelihood of finding anything was slim. It was probably best to start with areas that looked fairly untouched. She slid her hands between the mattress and the box spring and lifted.

Two hostile tics appeared on her HUD. Shit. Shit. Shit. It was too much to hope for that they would pass this room by. She dropped the mattress with a thud and instinctively went for her waistband. Of course there was no laser there. She had left her pistol back at the Tops, since she would be unable to bring it into the Ultra Luxe anyway. Okay, she would have to do this hand-to-hand. It wasn't her preference, but she had made it out okay in the past against way worse odds.

The two masked Society members burst through the unlocked door brandishing canes. Their faces were obscured by their masks and they were dressed for formal dinner, not a fist fight. The canes meant they had superior reach, but at least they hadn't surprised her.

One came at her full speed, leading with the cane, which was a mistake on his part. Callie struck her hand out towards the weapon and managed to grab ahold of it, wrenching it towards herself. His grip on the cane tightened and the other Society member came at her from the side, managing to hit her hard in the ribcage.

She couldn't let go of this cane, it was her best hope, to get one of the weapons off of them. The pain in her side was awful. If her assailant wasn't going to let go of the cane, she'd just drag him down with her. She slammed the uninjured side of her body against him, pushing him against the wall and twisting his arm at an unnatural angle. He was close to her size but not as muscular. She managed to pull him back away from the wall, gripping his shirt in one hand and keeping the cane firmly locked with the other, only to slam him back against the wall. In shock he dropped the cane and Callie took full control of it.

She turned just in time as the other Society member rushed towards her, looking to steal her own trick of tackling her against the wall. He was clearly a little more skilled than his partner and came at her low, rather than standing straight up. Callie barely had time to brace for the blow.

Her back hitting the wall and his weight thrown against her knocked the wind out of her. Fuck did her ribs hurt. Broken, one-hundred percent. Definitely broken. Still, she had to get out of this. She was not going down to some losers in top hats.

The Pip-boy on her wrist started beeping; the lazy notes signaling that she had a message. She hadn't received any messages since she was shot. In fact, she couldn't remember a single message since she had left the vault. The distraction was not a welcome one and gave the Society attacker another moment to bring down his cane on her shoulder, narrowly missing her head.

Callie went back into action, bringing her knee to his groin as hard as she could. She did it twice for good measure. He staggered back but certainly wasn't out of the fight. She held the cane at both ends and rushed back towards him, keeping her elbows bent. She got him right in the stomach before pulling the bar up the length of his torso and smashing him in the face. He went down, hard. Callie switched her grip to that of holding a baseball bat and thwacked him in the head, splitting his skull grotesquely. The other attacker hadn't moved, but her HUD still read him as a threat.

While every fiber of her being was just screaming for her to get the fuck out of there, she still wasn't any further along. True, she had been attacked by Society members, so at the very least Benny was going to be pissed, but something still wasn't right. Had she read Marjorie wrong this whole time? Been taken in by an act? She used to be much more suspicious than this.

Before turning her attention back to the room, Callie aimed the cane at the center of the downed man's head and took a hard swing. The tic on her Pip-boy flickered out. Blood got on her dark-colored shoes. Now there were three bloody messes wrecking the carpet. She took a moment to take a closer look at the wounds in her two attackers' heads and compare the breakage pattern to the side of the investigator's face. It was certainly possible the investigator's wound was inflicted by a cane as well. He must have died recently because the body had only the faintest signs of bloating, and while the room was kept cool, it was nowhere near as cold as a refrigeration unit.

Callie started with the pockets of the Society members' trousers, looking for a slip of paper, a key, anything. Other than an ancient stick of gum she came away with nothing. Again she turned her attention to the mattress, flipping it over and letting it crash into the bedside table, shattering the lamp that had been sitting there. Nothing.

Fuck she was nervous. She didn't want to be here anymore. There was another tic on her HUD, this one wasn't marked as hostile, but she was too jumpy now, knowing how easily people changed colors. She didn't bother trying to hide anything, but did set the door to lock when it closed behind her. Someone was certain to discover what had happened in the room before long. And fuck, Mortimer had sent her to the room. He had tried to kill her. But why? Was she somehow broadcasting to the whole world that she was a threat?

Rather than take the elevator down and have to pass Mortimer at the reception desk, she took the stairs at the back. She would still have to cross the lobby somehow to make her way out of the building.

Once she reached the ground level she took a deep breath and opened the door. She was in a hallway identical to the one on the fourth floor, lined with guest rooms. Shit, there was no way to avoid Mortimer at all. She was going to have to walk past him.

Her attention turned momentarily back to her Pip-boy. She had received that message while occupied upstairs. So strange. Back in the vault, messages were sent back and forth via the Pip-boys, but she hadn't seen any really around in the Wastes. Heck Gunderson had implied they were rare, that only vaulties and those who killed vaulties got their hands on them. Her stomach dropped, was it another survivor from Vault 3? The prospect of encountering someone so far back in her past was unnerving, even if it had only been a few years since she first left. She didn't really have any positive memories from the vault.

No, the alternative was even more shocking. The message was from Benny, at least, claimed to be from Benny.

"Girlie, Swank's back with your book."

But Benny didn't have a Pip-boy, he wasn't particularly savvy with technology, although he got along with Yes Man just fine. It seemed suspicious from her perspective. Then again, about everything seemed suspicious lately.

One way or another she had to make it back to the Tops. She would only find out what was going on there.

She peered around the corner, damn now she was the suspicious one, and caught sight of Mortimer at the reception desk. He looked utterly nonplussed. Weighing her options, it was probably best for her to just walk by. If Mortimer was going to kill her out in the open, he was going to do it. There wasn't a way for her to covertly eliminate him, just as there wouldn't be a way for him to covertly eliminate her.

At the very least, she waited until he was engaged in conversation with another patron and then began her stroll out. Rushing through would just draw more attention to herself. Walk like a human being and he might look straight past her.

If Mortimer had seen her exit, he didn't acknowledge it. Still, she couldn't breathe easily until she was back out on the Strip. Here she wasn't completely outnumbered, at least. Well, she was, but all of the tourists milling around gave her some sense of comfort. In. A firefight, they might not have any allegiances regarding who to shoot at, which meant some of them might be on her side by default.

Swank still wasn't at the front desk. He may have been upstairs with Benny. It was weird, getting that message. Otherwise her inbox was empty. She must have gotten messages before, there was a possibility that Dr. Mitchell had cleared her inbox. He would have known how. But he hadn't deleted anything else. Then again, maybe he wanted those files for himself. Maybe that was why he had covertly tried to change Pip-boys with her.

She could hear voices on the other side of the suite wall. Benny's and Swank's. Their tone was casual and unhurried.

"It's all well and good, but stick her on another floor. Don't want her too close." It was Benny's voice. Callie's heart dropped. She knew full well that her behavior last night was equivalent to a refusal, but it hadn't been an outright rejection of Benny.

"I agree, I'll get her set up on the 11th floor. Doubt she'll stick around for long, but I've got to be a gentleman about it."

Swank didn't owe her anything though. He had been nothing but charming the whole time she had been here.

"Well, I trust your judgement on these things."

"I'll go see to it now, then."

The door swung open and Callie found herself face to face with Swank with nothing to say for herself.

"Uh, thanks for the textbook."

"Don't thank me yet, I only hope it's one that can help you out." He poked her right in the forehead, miming where the bullet might have gone through. It was a playful gesture, like one between kid siblings. Fuck she was going to be sick any minute now.

"Callie, that you?" Benny came to the door as Swank started down the hallway.

"Yeah," her mouth felt dry, chalky, as if she had been walking outside in a dust storm. Not knowing what else to do she stepped into the suite. "Listen, about last night."

"You don't really want to talk about this." Benny took a long drag from his cigarette, as if to emphasize his point. "I can see it in your face. And I don't really want to talk about it either. Rejection isn't good for the psyche, and both you and I need confidence right now."

"Don't send me away."

"What?" Benny swung back around, his expression showing visible shock. She had managed to surprise him.

"I know you're keeping me around because you need me. I'm still the only one that can replace the Platinum Chip, so I'm valuable." It was the reality of her situation. Even if only Benny knew she could replicate the Chip's programming, plenty of members of multiple factions had implied she was valuable to them.

"Wait, Callie," his eyes narrowed, "are you injured?"

"Yeah, yeah." She had gotten so caught up in the prospect of being discarded that she had simply tolerated the pain in her shoulder and rib cage. They still both hurt like hell when she moved, but standing still and not breathing too hard it was more like a dull ache. Last time she checked she hadn't been bleeding, her posture must have given it away.

"I thought I told you not to leave the Strip." Benny went behind the bar and pulled open a drawer that housed medical supplies.

"I didn't, this happened at the Ultra Luxe. I went looking after those disappearances."

He rounded the corner of the bar with a handful of stims. "Where are you hurt?"

"Here," she pointed to her ribs at the point the pain was most intense. "And the shoulder that apparently is hanging limply by my side."

"Yeah, I figured that one." He shot her in the shoulder first, emptying two syringes into the muscle there. "How many do you think for the ribs?"

"Just one, I think." She looked at her Pip-boy, it had easily registered the trauma wounds. "This is something the autodoc is actually good for. It can fix me up at the same time it works on my head."

He followed her instruction to the letter, only using one stim on her ribs. It wasn't enough, but she didn't dare ask for more.

"Now, explain to me who I need to kill over at the Ultra Luxe." He was entirely serious.

"I don't even know. The family of the runaway bride hired a private investigator to look into her disappearance. I thought he might have more information. I went up to his room. He was dead. Two Society members attacked me, but they didn't have any more information on them."

Now the drugs were taking effect, the swelling in her shoulder was already breaking up and her range of motion increasing.

"It's either Marjorie or Mortimer, or both. None of those chumps would act without permission."

"I don't know. Marjorie seems to like me, but that could all be an act. Mortimer is even less of a people person than I am." She swung her arms back and forth as she spoke, testing out her pain threshold.

"Oh he likes people alright, just for dinner though."

She let out a weak laugh. "You changed the subject."

"Huh?"

"You're sending me away. Because I said no."

"You didn't say no, Girlie. Only you didn't say yes either. Are you saying no now?"

"Yes."

"Wait, now I'm confused." He had burned his cigarette all the way down, only to light another one.

"Yes, I'm saying no now."

"Maybe later, then."

Callie was torn between giving in and going against the person she was almost sure she was and the person Benny wanted her to be. But whenever she thought about it she felt even more panicky than she felt about the prospect of being moved to the 11th floor, or moving out altogether before long.

When he was fun and she was fun it had seemed simple enough. Now he was speaking the language of the Overseer, even if it had been in indirect terms. The Overseer had operated by ideology as well, weaving stories of happiness derived from love, copulation, procreation. The first of those was optional, you could fake the first one. Really, people only ever cared about the last two.

"Don't have Swank worry about me anymore, I can just move into the Lucky 38. House offered me a suite there, and I'll probably have better access to his Securitrons while I'm working on the Chip replacement."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Absentmindedly, he put out his cigarette, even though it was nowhere near finished.

"Before I came in, you and Swank were talking about moving me to the 11th floor."

"No we weren't." His face looked so open, honest, that she almost believed him.

"I heard you."

"Swank brought a dame home that helped him. She butted into his business, or he butted into hers. Somehow they lost their pants in the process. It wasn't about you, Girlie."

"What?"

"We were talking, but it wasn't about you. Go see for yourself, she's probably down in the lobby. Red-headed woman, apparently used to be a caravanner. Swank said she's a good shot, must be good at something else too."

Callie hadn't realized she had forgotten to breathe. "So you want me to stay?"

"I want you to stay. And I have a habit of getting things to work out in my favor."

"So do I."

"So it's good we agree on this or it would end in a whole lot of tears for one of us. I assume you got my message about the textbook?"

Her heart had stopped pounding so hard. Even though she had rejected that, he still wanted her here.

"About that, you don't have a Pip-boy."

"Yes Man told me he could hail you."

That didn't make sense, if she was in the Ultra Luxe, she was out of short range communications range with Yes Man's unit. It had limited access to House's network as well, but that still shouldn't have let it contact her at the Ultra Luxe.

She shook her head, "it shouldn't have been able to. I've got to talk to it."

Benny followed her back to the office. He had clearly been working here before Swank came by. Handwritten notes were strewn about the room in his barely decipherable handwriting. It was probably smart to keep separate copies and not simply store everything in Yes Man's memory.

"Yes Man, explain how you hailed me at the Ultra Luxe."

"Well, Pretty Lady Friend, Mr. House's network controls all the Securitrons throughout the Strip. Most of their programming is stored on the hard drive of each individual unit, but commands can be issued to individual robots via the network. When a robot is out of range of Mr. House's wireless signal, messages can be relayed through the unit's short wave broadcast function, bouncing from Securitron to Securitron until it reaches the right unit. Isn't it clever? So I bounced the encrypted message from my unit to the next closest, the system took it from there until it found its way to your Pip-boy."

"Yes Man, is this a secure way to transmit information? Wouldn't House have access to any messages you sent me."

"Nope, not as far as I can tell. I encrypted it to the best of my ability. It was for your Pip-boy unit only. Even if he could find the message, the volume of messages relayed this way is so high it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

The explanation made sense, but she still had reservations of using other Securitrons to reach her Pip-boy.

"Hey, Benny, now that we know Yes Man can do this. Don't send me a message again this way. Not until we control the bots."

"You're the wizard. I'll let you call the shots with bots."

"So you're really not kicking me out?" While her energy was starting to flag, she still had a full evening ahead of her. She had to set up the autodoc to fix her. She could sleep while it either killed her or saved her.

"Right now, I'll take you whatever way I can get you."

It would have to be enough for them both.


	6. Like her Heart would Break

Rather than feeling as if the autodoc was inside her, which was most certainly the case, it rather felt as if Callie was inside the autodoc. The sensation of its metal appendages penetrating her skull and scraping away at her tissues was absent. Rather, if felt like a metal womb that surrounded her, protected her from harm and social responsibilities. She felt curled up along side of it, smelling like iron. Too much blood.

In an abstract way she knew she wasn't really conscious, but only with the certainty of a skeptical dreamer noticing little things out of place rather than rejecting the fantasy outright. Still, she felt warm and safe and protected. Either it was the autodoc swallowing her whole or Benny had meant it when he said he would be waiting for her on the other side. As she'd drifted away he had held her hand between both of his.

They had sex a little before she went under, right after she had finished programming the autodoc and double checking each setting. He told her that she was his girl, even if she wouldn't marry him. Cruelly, she had laughed in his face; the whole thing had become absurd. It was his blind persistence she had been laughing at. They were so fucked up.

Then he whispered that she could be his man too, if that would make her happier. He wasn't going to be that picky about it.

That wasn't an invitation she was going to deny. She slid her fingers past his lips and he sucked, smirking around them the whole time, darting his tongue in the spaces between the digits. As she rode him, he dug his fingers into her hips and she conceded she'd always be bruised there, so long as they stuck together. Purple welts showed off the pattern of his fingertips. She came like that, on top of him and two fingers in his mouth, his tongue dancing around them, biting only slightly when she clenched around him. In moments like this she could almost believe that this was okay and that she would have ended up here despite everything else. Maybe he didn't have to shoot her in the head. Maybe the world didn't have to die and her ancestors have been lucky while his had been poor and abandoned. After all, they had both made it to this point. Accidents of birth hadn't managed to kill either of them. They hadn't managed to kill each other either. Maybe that was the way the script was supposed to go and this was the perversion of it.

Even though she had little idea what she was doing, she pulled her lips around his cock. She could taste herself there, slightly sour and slightly sweet. She tasted just like other girls. Not so special there, utterly regular.

Without another woman's memories to guide her, her mind stopped, only to restart again when he mewled so sweetly above her. Panting little breaths informed her that she wasn't entirely terrible, but that didn't really mean she was entirely okay either, but the muscles in his thighs twitched all the same and both of his hands gripped into her hair, not directing her, just holding, like she might slip through his fingers. She splayed her right hand against his thigh, holding him in place. His tattoos stopped just above her hand, dark lines set off against the flush of his skin.

She wasn't entirely lost, she had seen those vids too, ones of blowjobs, only she had liked them less. Anyway they didn't adequately provide diagrams about what she was supposed to do with her tongue. The feminine blondes with their enhanced features would bob their head up and down, make their lips tight, but what to do with her tongue? They would roll their eyes up and look at the camera, placed just askew from where the man's line of vision would actually be.

With her fingers she had a little more confidence, sliding one past the tight ring of muscle and curling it as if he were her girl. He hitched at that, hitting the back of her throat and causing a little cough. But at the thought of what she was doing, the vulnerable position that he had placed himself in, if only to bring her a little fun, she was thrilled. It was as arousing a thought as she could conjure up. The physical enactment was less important than the idea of it, the idea of fucking him in the way he could fuck her, making him submit to her. The pleasure of it went to both her deteriorating brain and to her groin.

The second finger wouldn't fit, he was so fucking tight, and she wanted to tell him that. She wanted to speak in the lewd tones of men play acting their lust. Only she had been worried about breaking the spell that sat between them. Even though she couldn't see his face, she could imagine it, with his eyes closed and his mouth open, letting those pants and gasps that she could hear escape. He was strangely beautiful in this moment.

Like this his cock wasn't so unpalatable any more. It felt slick and hard against her lips and less overwhelming in her mouth. She wasn't servicing him, she was controlling him. His orgasm hit him so hard and fast that she didn't have time to pull off as he came down her throat. His cum was bitter and his voice sweet as he regained composure.

"Fuck, Girlie, fuck." He had brought both his hands to cover his face as he started to control his breathing.

Callie smiled, satisfied with herself. She may have not trusted her ability to understand his motives, but she could understand this.

The memory was quite close to her in the autodoc, as it should have been. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes ago. That was, if she could trust her sense of time. She had programed the bot with the aid of the medical textbook Swank had found, the binding did say 'Followers of the Apocalypse,' scrawled in blue pen, but she didn't ask anything more about it. Before she went under Benny had wanted one last go, she supposed. Always the chance she wouldn't come back up. Then he'd have to bury her a second time.

I buried her myself.

The double use of Benny's statement hadn't hit her quite so hard before. When Mint died he buried her body, so certain in her death. That certainty prevented him from ever believing she was Mint. Even when she had woken up thinking it was her name and her past, Benny had never believed. But he had buried her too, in that shallow grave above Goodsprings, and she had come back, baring memories of the girl he had loved in his childhood. He had buried her himself as well. That had been the burial of a stranger, without feeling or guilt. Benny had probably put dozens like her straight into the ground, if they even got that courtesy. Most were probably left to rot where they fell. Dr. Mitchell's body was still decomposing in his bed, if he hadn't been found yet.

He had wanted one more go and she had gotten up and kissed him with semen still in her mouth. She washed her hands and rinsed her mouth in the bathroom sink. He had come up behind her, gripping her at the waist and told her he loved her. A nod was all she could manage. Even now she couldn't. She was so close, but she couldn't.

No, Callie, be more assertive.

She couldn't understand why she cared for Benny.

Try again. It wasn't as if he could see into her mind, even if it was exposed in pieces in front of him.

She loved Benny. Full stop. Don't think of the conditions.

If she woke up, she might even try to tell him. No, she knew she wouldn't.

Because everything was the rhetoric of the Overseer. The Overseer was dead but even now she couldn't bring herself to concede he could have been right. She couldn't remember his face but she could remember his ideology.

In a very literal way memories were coming back to her. As the final remnants of Mint were manually peeled away, Callie peeked out from underneath, a strange little girl in a systematic vault with pretty mother and an absent father.

She was twelve-years-old and in the Overseer's office. His voice was loud, commanding, he only ever spoke with authority. At first his words were kind, he was speaking to a child after all, and even though she was in trouble, he wanted her to see things his way. Fiona Darby had told on her, that Callie Washington had kissed her, in the innocent sort of way children with a first crush do. But to Callie it seemed like the whole world was in Fiona's big blue eyes and the claustrophobia of the vault didn't matter anymore. This hadn't been the first incident to cause concern, the Overseer stated. Didn't Callie like the boys? Particularly Marco James? Although at sixteen, he wasn't such a boy anymore.

"No," she had said defiantly, she liked Fiona Darby with her wheat-blonde hair and blue eyes and dimple on the left side but not the right. She looked like a doll and spoke very little.

"Well, maybe when you're older you'll like Marco James, he's a very good match for you. I heard a secret, do you want to hear it?"

"No." Her protests were empty because the Overseer didn't care.

"I heard Marco James likes you very much."

But Marco James was short and heavy-set, even though they all got the same rations every morning, noon, and night. He smelled like the liquor his father drank and was four years older than her. She liked Fiona Darby.

The Overseer pat her on the head and told her to think a little more about Marco James. He would protect her. From what, he didn't say. There wasn't anything in the vault that Callie had ever seen that she couldn't protect herself from.

By sixteen she had moved on from Fiona Darby. She looked too much like a doll and spoke too little. Besides, she had gotten engaged and never kissed Callie back. Instead, Callie occupied herself with illicit vids on her Pip-boy she had gotten from Kyle Perkins. All the boys had shared the vids right about the age of fifteen. Their fathers passed them down as if they were the great secret of the vault. Never tell your mother, never tell your girlfriends or wives.

They were only really illicit when they were in her possession. Kyle was alright, she supposed. He didn't try to stick his hand down the front of her vault suit. Luckily, she knew better than the boys how to hide the file folders.

She and Kyle watched them together at first. Kyle liked the one with the thin, plain looking woman with tits that looked bolted on and the much larger man with big muscles. The man pinned the woman down and fucked her from behind. Callie knew which one of the pair Kyle was looking at, and that didn't bother her at all.

Callie liked the vid was a pretty girl, with breasts like pillows, soft and natural, twirling a baton in a short cheerleader uniform, it rode up and exposed her ass when she jumped. The flat plane of her abdomen was always exposed. Later in the video she inserted the end of the baton into herself. Callie liked that part less, but even in the monochrome format of the Pip-boy, she could tell that the girl's face was flushed, and she could hear the noises she made as she came. Callie liked that part, so she would focus on the girl's face as she fucked herself.

She and Kyle Perkins would watch their favorite vids together, side by side on their Pip-boys, they would touch themselves but not each other.

She had been called in to see the Overseer again, but not about the vids. He didn't know about that. She was here because she had punched Marco James in the face when he tried to rape her. They didn't teach that word in the vault. But she knew it just the same. She had punched him seven times straight in the nose before he blacked out. The blows were sharp and in quick succession. The next morning he had run straight to the Overseer, pride be damned.

He had pinned her to the ground of her single room after coming through the unlocked door. The room had been assigned to her after her mother had died. It would have been cramped for anyone else, but Callie spent most of her time working on the robots around the vault. She was hardly ever here and it was sparsely furnished. Marco James pulled up her skirt and down her blouse. His knee had struck her hard between her legs and his breath smelled like vodka. He told her that she had been promised to him and she was a little cunt for not delivering. Sixteen already and he hadn't gotten to fuck her. None of this mattered, what mattered was that she had punched him seven times in the face.

Couldn't Callie see that Marco James liked her? He had always liked her, it was destiny. He might have even loved her, and his love could make her very happy. Yes, really he must have loved her since she was a girl, just on the cusp of womanhood. And now that she was sixteen, well, wasn't she just so beautiful?

Callie didn't know how any of that could be true because they hadn't even spent an hour speaking to each other over the sixteen years of her life. She told the Overseer as much.

But she wasn't a little girl anymore, she was a young woman. The Overseer resolved to speak to her as an adult as she was now too young for childish coddling.

"I've paired you with Marco. It's important to the future of the vault. You will love him, marry him, have children with him."

"Give him someone else. I'm not interested. I don't like him."

"Callie, you've had biology, yes?"

"Yes." She had been good in some of her subjects. She was absolute shit in literature and English, but she was good in math and science. Biology a little less than physics, but she was okay.

"It is very good for the biology of the vault that you love Marco. Yes, he could love another girl, and you might love another boy, but it is important that you have children together."

"I don't see what this has to do with biology…"

"You're very special to us, Callie."

"You're still talking to me like a child." Certainly, this memory was flawed. Her encounter with the Overseer at sixteen hadn't gone this way, not at all. This was a fabrication she had concocted to avoid the truth of what happened. He hadn't been calm or level headed. He had simply screamed in her face that she would marry Marco, that he would keep her pregnant as often as possible, that he had invested so many resources in them already that this plan would pay off.

Callie had been terrified of him. He hadn't spoken to her in calm measured tones. He had snatched her by the front of her jumpsuit and smashed her back against the wall, calling her a pain in his ass but one he couldn't get rid of. He said if he wasn't a better man than that, he'd fuck her himself. But that hadn't been in the long term plan.

It ashamed Callie to remember she had been scared of him. While she had easily shown Marco she wouldn't give in to him, that she would fight back like a vicious animal, she had been petrified of the Overseer.

He let her go after that. In hindsight, he had been confident that he managed to break her. But six weeks later he was dead. He hadn't been particularly old or particularly frail. He was just a normal man who was now heading for the incinerator. Callie imagined that his death had been painful, she wanted him to suffer badly. He'd been found face first in his bowl of Sugar Bombs.

Marco James married Sarah Drass later that year. Their mothers were sisters.

Callie was six and her mother was beautiful. She had straight hair and pale skin and freckles and blue eyes. Callie had none of those things, her freckles would come later, after she had been in the Mojave sun for weeks, but at six she was clear-faced. She looked at her mother and looked at herself and didn't understand. Her mother had never taught her to have fear of anything and so Callie asked her, why they didn't look alike.

"But we do, baby, come here." Her mother pulled her up onto her lap in front of the mirror. "Look here," she poked her little girl in the center of her forehead and Callie contorted her face, scrunching it up in annoyance. "You've seen me do that too, right?"

Callie nodded, her mother always made that face when the Overseer came by to check on them.

"And see," Her mother pulled her straight hair back into a ponytail. She then undid the ties around Callie's poofy, curly pigtails and tugged her hair straight back into a ponytail as well. Callie's mother lowered her head so it was in line with her daughter's smaller one. "Our faces have the same shape, don't they?"

"Yes, ma." They really did, with high cheeks and small chins. Their noses were different, and their eyes different colors, but their faces did look alike.

"You look like me, but you also look like your papa. Like the best of both of us." Her smile was a little sad. She rearranged Callie's hair so it was back into two pigtails. It would never stay in the ponytail for long. Her hair was too thick and heavy.

"Where did papa go?"

Her mother set her back on the floor. She was six, after all. She wasn't a little baby anymore and she was getting too big for her mother to coddle like this. Callie was going to school and learning math. She loved math.

When Callie was eighteen, almost nineteen, the decision was made to open the vault. The instructions and reasons given were vague, but Callie knew the real reason. Eight months ago she had hacked into the records kept by the last Overseer. So many things had haunted her since sixteen, from when he beat her in his office and she had last shown weakness, since she had yielded even though her mother never taught her how to be afraid.

The Overseer's notes had been jumbled, cramped, even as they were uniformly typed. They were like the confessions of a madman. There had been years worth of scratchings to pour through and most of them hadn't meant anything. She wrote a script that scraped the files for any mention of her name, her mother's name, her family name.

They weren't opening the vault now because they needed parts for the water purification system. That was what the new Overseer said, but she knew better. Had she been asked, she could have cobbled together a filter with a little work. It wouldn't have been perfect, but it would have kept the vault sealed. But Callie said nothing about the excuses used.

No, the vault was being opened because they had an inbreeding problem with the residents. They were getting slower, dimmer, more susceptible to disease. The last Overseer had tried to correct the problem by arranging marriages between the most distantly related residents. In the months leading up to her parent's marriage, three newborns had died or been killed, it wasn't clear from the looping illogic of the notes left behind. Only thing that was clear was the babies had been born "wrong." Two-hundred years shouldn't have been enough generations for the level of problems they were seeing. But Clara Hill with her soft, snowy skin and Gilbert Washington who had seemed impossibly tall, dark, and handsome, even at fifteen, certainly would produce a child without deformities.

All of the notes were stored in her Pip-boy now, carefully concealed in one of many hidden folders. She was an expert at hiding things. Sometimes, she would read passages from the folder out-loud to deactivated bots while she worked on them. It was as close as she would come to telling anyone else what she knew. It was a strategy to keep herself from going crazy.

She had been an ill-conceived science project, right from the beginning. Experimentation hadn't begun when Doctors Henry and Mitchell started poking around in her skull, trying to fix the problems Benny had created. Entering the Wasteland hadn't been her first brush with unfulfilled expectations either. But the new Overseer had seen the futility of placing the vault's future in a bi-racial assumed lesbian's uterus. That was never fucking working, so instead, the vault gave up on Callie. The vault was going to open, and they were going outside.

The first time Callie saw the sky the sun was just coming up over the Mojave. It made the sand look as if it was on fire, that brilliant orange-red setting alight the dull beige of the packed sand and dirt. She resolved then and there that she wasn't going back into the vault. When she breathed in the dust of the outside world she coughed violently. It was utterly glorious.

A year was reduced to a second and she was meeting Arcade. He was tall and handsome and stumbled over his words just a little bit when he spoke. Other times he was very fluent, speaking so fast she could barely keep up and not dropping a beat along his way. There were secrets she knew he was keeping but for the first time since Kyle Perkins she looked at a man and wasn't disgusted. Arcade didn't try to put his hand down the front of her pants either.

Still, he laughed at her jokes even though she didn't think she was very funny. No one had ever told her she was funny before. People hadn't told her much of anything. One night, while they were out gathering plants, they had to come up with dinner on their own. She shot at geckos with her laser pistol and he scowled every time she vaporized them. Callie just shrugged it off. She hadn't known scarcity. There were more geckos just over the ridge. It's not like they had a standard pistol with them, anyway.

They cooked and ate and Arcade played with her Pip-boy while she leaned against him. Arcade didn't like any of her holovids. He said they were vulgar. Callie just shrugged him off. Her stomach was full and she was happy. To think that people found the Wasteland to be terrifying.

She didn't stay with the Followers long. One day she just left. She didn't owe any particular allegiance to anyone, even Arcade. He only liked men, and she was supposed to only like women. But that wasn't why she left, not really. It was just that there was only so little time and so many different people she wanted to be. She had thought she would be traveling a lot more with the Followers, but they were putting down foundations, not pushing ahead into the unexplored. There was a whole world in front of her and no one to tell her what she could and could not do.

Once, after she left the Followers, she spent a whole day shooting birds straight out of the sky. They seemed endless.

There was one last vision for her to see, as she swam back towards consciousness. It was the last tiny flare of the girl who had died before her. Years and years ago. How old was Benny? The Tribal girl who could speak to animals and who Benny had loved for her own sake, even though she had been special and forbidden. She was petite and pretty and even though her skin was the same color as Callie's her eyes were a magnificent blue. She wore that purple dress, no one had ever seen a purple dress before they had made it to the Tops. The purple and the blue and her dark hair falling in waves made Mint look like the whole ocean.

Callie stood outside the scene, as a spectator, rather than a participant. But she had to have been both. Mint hadn't existed outside of her for years. A long stretch of being a brain in a jar to flickering back to life for a few weeks through a perverse set of circumstances.

The first night at the Tops, Mint fell asleep on the carpeted floor instead of the bed. There had been a celebration in honor of their newly occupied home. Together, they would be safe here. But there were no dogs or birds for her to speak to inside the walls of the casino. Benny was still downstairs, cautiously celebrating with the other men of the tribe. Only they weren't to think of themselves as tribe anymore, just a family of the Strip. They were respectable now, Benny would see to that.

Mint lay on the floor of Benny's suite, smelling the dust in the carpet until well past two in the morning. He came upstairs and found her lying there, waking her gently as he gathered her into his arms and moved her to the bed they would now share, out in the open. Everyone knew now and they didn't give a damn. They couldn't give a damn. Benny was in charge and she was still a witch that spoke to the spirits of animals. He would never be able to break the Tribal out of her. Not fully.

Mint loved Benny so much that is felt like her heart would break, like her love would become a living thing and crawl straight out of her chest to be with him. She had loved him since they were children starving in the Mojave in between times of feast. He had stopped her when her rage seemed uncontainable and didn't recoil when she used her powers. When the other tribesmen had wanted to kill her and be done with it, he made some of them see the error of their ways and killed the rest of them.

"Benny," her voice was more musical than Callie's. She spoke like songs rather than like a mechanic.

"You never have to sleep in the ground again."

"It's so quiet."

"I know, love. It's going to be quiet from now on. You can rest."

Callie woke up alone gasping for air and the autodoc still penetrating her.


	7. That Ultra Luxe Fountain

The autodoc had entered her at the base of her skull, weaving it's mechanical fingertips along the surface of her brain from a single incision that would go unnoticed. Callie knew the brain had no nerve endings, but she mentally replicated the pain of being punctured and fondled. It was all too much and she could distantly tell she was screaming.

She shouldn't have woken with it still inside her, working away and correcting the damage caused by Benny, Henry, and Mitchell. And Arcade. She should have slowly woken, as if from a wonderful night's rest, even if her mind had actually been swarmed by details she had quite forgotten. Something must have gone wrong.

The pillowcase her head rested on had a bloom of deep, rusty brown. Her blood. It had caked and dried where it had spilled. The amount wasn't excessive, about as much as one could expect given the location of the incision. Still, the petals of the flower it drew were grotesque.

While she had been alone when she woke, she was now dimly aware of other bodies in the room. Two of them, or at least two voices, yelling at each other. Neither knew what to do to stop her screaming. She didn't know either.

Benny and Swank. It couldn't have been as bad as she initially thought, if she could match vocal tones. Her own screaming stopped, although she didn't really mean to. Only her head was becoming clearer and she realized she wasn't actually in pain, she was only terrified of what she had woken to.

They couldn't figure out how to get the machine out of her. Just ripping it out didn't seem like the best course of action, considering they weren't sure what it was attached to on the other end. And it had entered so close to her spinal column. Both men had enough experience killing people to know that was a delicate area.

"It's okay. It's okay." Callie managed to speak but kept her eyes screwed shut. If she looked and saw any evidence of the machine still inside her, she couldn't trust herself to not lose it again.

"Girlie, I'm pretty sure this isn't okay. You're awake and this pile of shit is still in your head." Benny was feigning detachment.

"It doesn't hurt. I just can't look at it. It…" It scared her, but she wasn't willing to admit that. "I think it's almost done. I saw Mint leave. You carried her away." Now she kept her eyes shut so she wouldn't show weakness. Despite herself, she felt as if she was going to cry. Not because she was scared or sad or in pain. None of those things really, although all of them were a little bit true. "She loved you so much, Benny. She showed me."

"How do we get this out of you?" Benny hadn't acknowledged her previous statement. Callie didn't know why.

"I think it's withdrawing now…" There was the sensation of tubing running against the incision in her neck, sliding out like a thin snake. "Yeah, it'll stitch up the incision and I'll be done. It's over." There was still no explanation to why she had woken up too early, but besides probably scaring the shit out of the entire 13th floor, she didn't seem any worse for it. She could sense the little pinpricks of the autodoc sealing up the back of her neck. "Fuck me."

Her neck lowered from its strained position. One of the autodoc attachments had been holding it in place. Other than the stiffness in her neck, she felt fine. Not all that different than she had before she had gone under.

It took her a moment to collect herself, but she was able to sit up, to get her head away from the crust of dried blood on the pillow. She was right where she had been when the procedure had started, in Benny's bed. Out of habit she lifted her right wrist to look at her Pip-boy. She had left it on the vital statistics screen and it still displayed the cheery boy's figure that was supposed to non-threateningly reflect their current physical state. Everything looked fine, but then again, everything always looked fine. The autodoc must have finished patching her ribs and shoulder as well.

Oh, her hand. She held her left hand in front of her face and slowly made it into a fist. Opening and closing it no longer induced any pain in her fingers. That had been taken care of too. It had been a really long time since she broke her hand and it healed back improperly. That was even before Benny shot her.

"How long was I out?'

"Five days."

"The fuck?" She was shocked. She was expecting forty-five minutes, maybe a couple of hours, tops. In the vault she had never heard of anyone, no matter how complicated the procedure, being attached to an autodoc for days. Maybe she had programmed it wrong? But it seemed to have worked. She could recall much more about her life in the vault now. Sure, there were still gaps, but the ones you would expect from natural forgetting, unimportant little things. She hadn't yet tried to reach out to Mint, to see if there was still something there that wasn't hers.

"How do you feel?"

"Er, fine, I guess, same as when I went in. Well, better, look." She now held her hand in front of Benny's face and demonstrated her dexterity. He just sort of rolled his eyes at her. Well, whatever, if he didn't agree with her priorities, nothing would change that.

"I meant your head."

"We won't really know, will we? Either I'll have a fit or I won't." There was a way to know about Mint, though, at least in an abstract way. Callie tried to bring up a memory of the Tribe, something she had seen before. Mint was sitting in Benny's lap; Mint was newly seventeen. His arms were crossed around her waist and her back was against his chest. All these years of being so demanding and Mint was finally going to get what she wanted. Him.

But Callie didn't remember it as if she had lived it, or even as if she had seen it in a movie. She only remembered it as if the story had been relayed to her, shared between friends or sisters. The story was there, but not the vividness of the image.

"I think it worked." She didn't elaborate. "Five days, seriously?"

"Is that a long time? Swank and I had no idea. Cass said we shouldn't be worried though."

"Cass?"

"The woman Swank brought back. She helped him find that textbook. She also looked into that problem at the Ultra Luxe for you." Benny was playing with something in the pocket of his slacks.

"Not so much a problem as a giant fucking annoyance." Callie swung her legs over the side of the bed. She wanted to get up, move around. There didn't feel like there were any limitations holding her back.

"Well, it's taken care of. Cass found the Gunderson boy."

"Really?" She went to her drawer and pulled out a tshirt and slacks, pulling them on over her underwear. What she really needed was a shower, but she was actually hoping for some food first.

"Yeah, in pieces in the Ultra Luxe freezer. Which reminds me, I have a present for you, when you're up to it."

"What kind of present, Benny?" She eyed him suspiciously. This could be literally anything.

"Come on." Benny gestured towards the seating room. As Callie went to pass him, he grabbed ahold of her shoulder and pulled her towards her. "Do you still want me?" His voice was low against the side of her face.

"Yeah, yeah I do." She had responded without having to think about it. She meant it too. Only then did he kiss her.

"I'd fuck you right now if I could, Girlie. But there's company in the other room and you're hungry, I'm sure." His hand stayed in place at the back of her neck, carefully pulled away from the incision line.

Swank and a petite woman sat on the couch. That must have been Cass. She couldn't have been taller than 5'4" and was built like a bird, all narrow bones. It was clear her clothing hung off her narrow shoulders. Not that she was emaciated, just small. Her red ponytail cascaded out from under her hat and she was even more freckled than Callie. Probably a combination of her pale skin and extensive sun exposure.

"Hi?" Callie never knew how to start conversations. "I'm Callie." She offered her hand.

Cass bounced to her feet and shoot Callie's hand with more force than she had expected.

"Cass," the redhead offered. Politeness all around.

"So, uh, you and Swank, right?" Seriously, how were you supposed to talk to people? Callie had obviously never figured that out.

Cass laughed and Swank just scowled on the couch. "You managed to sleep through the start and the finish of that one."

"I was out for five days."

"It was over in three." Swank offered up. "She's insane."

Cass rolled her eyes in response. "I hear the same about you, Callie." When Cass smiled she had two crooked incisors, one on each side, but overall her teeth weren't terrible. Not like Swank's and Benny's. They hadn't been tools, Cass's teeth, just ill cared for.

"More or less, yeah. I'm hoping less, now."

"I followed your lead on the Gunderson boy," Cass sipped from a glass of whiskey.

Benny and Swank each had a glass as well. She hated the stuff. She had always preferred vodka, since she was fifteen and her enjoyment of it hadn't decreased after she smelt it in Marco's mouth.

"I knew his Pa a little. Everyone back West will say that, but I did transport for him a little when I was just starting out with the caravan business. I found Ted chopped up in the basement freezer of the Ultra Luxe. I could ID him by the ring on one of the hands. Showed it to his Pa."

"Who did it?"

Benny put a finger to his mouth. "That'll ruin my gift. Eat something and we'll go."

"I can eat and walk." She grabbed a prickly pear fruit off the table and looked for a knife so she could cut it in two. Benny would always bite through the skin, but it wasn't to her tastes. "Where's my pistol?"

"I'll get it." Benny excused himself to the bedroom. It must have been back with Yes Man. Callie ate from the fruit while she waited.

"We were worried for you, Cal." Swank seemed to adopt familiarity with others quickly. Callie didn't particularly mind. He had never given her cause for concern and had risked his own skin for her based on nothing more than Benny's request of him. While she couldn't say she was a good person, and she definitely couldn't say Benny was a good person, Swank was. Callie was reminded of something Arcade had said and she wondered if maybe Swank was a little bit stupid.

"I feel fine, Swank. Don't worry about me."

He hadn't moved from his place on the couch, as much space as possible separating him and Cass even though they shared the same piece of furniture.

"Nah, we know you're tough. Ya did kill Caesar after all."

Cass couldn't have looked more shocked. "That was you?"

"Er, maybe," Benny had returned with her pistol. He passed it to her grip-first. She took it from him, double-checked the safety, and looped it into her waist band. "It might have been him," she nodded towards Benny. "We weren't really keeping track."

"I'll let you take credit. Are you ready? It's not far."

"Yeah," she grabbed the last two slices of the pear and all four of them made their way out of the suite. "Are you coming too," Callie asked even though her mouth was full.

"I've got some logistics to handle back here. Benny and I are addressing the Not-at-Home issue once you're done with your task and if you go 48 hours without an attack." That was right. They had days to work while she was out and she still hadn't finished the replacement Chip.

Callie gestured at Cass, asking-but-not-asking if it was fine to talk in front of the other woman.

"She knows about the Lucky 38," Benny lit a cigarette.

"I'll work on it tonight. It won't be 100% finished but I'll have to make adjustments on site." Benny hadn't said that Cass knew everything. Only that she knew about the Lucky 38, so Callie kept her statements vague.

"I get the feeling that you'll have other things on your mind tonight, Cal." He patted her on the head, which was kind of awkward since they were the same size.

"I'm going to go get drunk downstairs until I'm useful," Cass sure was matter of fact.

Benny and Callie parted ways with Swank and Cass in the lobby. Once they were outside the Tops Callie felt more comfortable asking about Cass.

"I thought you didn't want to involve more people."

Benny had finished his cigarette and started on a second.

She had tried smoking when she was fourteen. It wasn't entirely pleasant and she hadn't gone back to it. Cigarettes were rationed like everything else in the vault. Kids got it via contraband. She spent her resources on vodka and Mentats. The second only had the underground trade, but while she had been fooling around with Valerie she had pretty much unlimited access to the medical supply.

"I want to keep my boys out of it as much as possible. It might be impossible, but I don't want this coming back around to them if I fail. And I couldn't keep sending Swank out. Cass has got weapon skills and can work independently. She's useful to have around. And she's expendable in the end."

Callie nodded. It felt a little like a replacement. Cass had literally finished the mission she had started. But, then again, she had made it quite clear to Benny she wasn't about to be anyone's errand girl. And it wasn't as if she could have helped anyway. Five fucking days.

"Don't breathe a word of the NCR to her though. Far as I can tell she still has loyalty there. She'll help us against Not-at-Home because she lacks a sense of direction. Swank said she lost her caravan and was looking for some thrills. Practically tore his pants off," Benny chuckled. "After we take the 38 though, I don't think she'll stick by us. She's fickle."

"You could say the same thing about me." She smiled, revealing her white teeth in perfect rows.

"Nah, Girlie," Benny swung his arm across her shoulders as they continued walking out the back security gate to the Strip. "We're stuck together and you know it."

Benny waved to the bot that showed them out the rear gate. The walls of the Strip might have been dotted with these little entrances and exits not known to the general population. They were nearly invisible as they blended into the mosaic of wreckage the walls had been constructed of.

Callie heard the buzzing of bloatflies first. Second was the intense smell of rotten flesh. The Wasteland always sort of smelt that way, but this was more concentrated, forcing her to take notice. Third, only third, she saw it. Bloated and torn, an eye already missing and the other one glossed over but looking outward; unmistakably him. That eye, and the other one, now missing, had appraised her as meat, and now he was reduced to that. Mortimer's head on a stake. It wasn't showy, like the Legion's crucifictions. It was actually quite a humble scene, standing only about waist high and showing considerable signs of decomposition. It had been five days, after all.

Benny came up behind her, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, the heat of it smoldering close to her face, but not close enough to burn. One hand wrapped around her, coming to rest on her waist. The other one he left free to handle the cigarette. "Do you like it? I'm glad you woke up in time to see."

"I don't need you to protect me, Benny." Her words weren't angry or unkind, just a statement.

"I know, but let me do something nice for my girl. Besides, it fit into the plan nicely. Marjorie was more than happy to turn him over." The second cigarette went out. He dropped it to the ground and pressed his lips against the flesh of her neck.

"I like it." She pulled away from him and went for her laser, drawing and aiming. Benny stopped her before she could fire.

"Use mine, you'll get more shots at him before there's nothing left to shoot at." He gripped the silver barrel of his pistol, offering her the pearl-inset grip. This was the one he had shot her with. Handing it to her like this was as much of a gift as Mortimer's literal head. The weight of it was different in her hand than the laser. It was smaller, lighter, more compact. It felt like nothing in her hands.

Unfamiliar with firing a conventional weapon, she widened her stance and looked down the sights, something she typically didn't have to do with laser, which fired off shots so quickly that even if her precision hadn't been great on the first shot, it was only a fraction of a second before another round could go off.

There were thirteen rounds in the clip. She emptied it into Mortimer's skull. The first three were uneventful. By the fourth, she was shaking. By the seventh, she had regained her composure. Bits and pieces of bone flew off, scattering in the dust. There was no blood left to splatter, but it was still satisfying, watching the bullets chip away at what used to be a human but was now just meat. All of her shots hit but the fifth. That had gone somewhat askew in the distance. When she was done, the head was no longer recognizable, well, it had barely been when she started. The clip was dry.

She wasn't really thinking things through. Only an impulse gripped her. Benny had been standing behind her, observing the scene but not really commenting. She turned on her heels to face him. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his slacks, manipulating something in his pocket again, something he hadn't shown her.

The impact against his thighs sent him to the ground in a single blow. Either he hadn't anticipated her attacking him or he made no move to stop her. He was good in hand to hand, though, so it must have been the later. Callie squeezed her thighs against his torso, locking in his arms and pinned him to the ground. Shame that his white shirt would be dirty now. There was no doubt she was stronger with her lower body than he was with his upper, but in any case, he didn't fight her.

The pearl handle was slick and cold in her left hand. She gripped it without pain or discomfort. In fact, it fit better into her comically small palm than the bulky heft of the laser.

She pressed the barrel against his right temple, holding it there impossibly long. Benny's eyes were wide and a little bit wild. They both knew the clip was empty, but it didn't change the peculiar intensity of this moment between them. He had killed her. Killed her. With this compact little gun in her hand. She pressed the barrel against his temple until he winced from genuine pain.

Over and over she pulled the trigger, listening to the empty clicks. Benny kept his eyes open and locked on hers, but he didn't fight, he didn't struggle, he didn't do anything but stare back. When she had enough she tossed the gun away, into the dirt.

When they kissed she bit his lip so hard that he bled into her mouth.

"Well," that goddamn smirk of his. She was kind of fond of it. "We know you're still crazy."

She put her head on his chest and laughed. The vibrations of his laughter caused her head to bounce a little bit. It was the same as when they had escaped from the Legion and fell into the Colorado. Absurd.

"You killed me. I should hate you."

"This isn't exactly a new revelation, Girlie."

"I had an excuse before. Mint loved you so much it was overwhelming. She dragged my body across the Wasteland to find you. Now she's gone. I don't have that excuse anymore."

"Must have not been an excuse then."

"I guess not." She scrunched her face. "Benny."

"Callie."

"Don't take this the wrong way, okay?"

"I'll take it whatever way I want, but given our history it seems unlikely that taking something the wrong way will ruin this. You did just mime emptying an entire clip in my head. Let's be fair, I only shot you once."

Her hold on his arms had loosed and he slid his arms out and placed one hand on each of her hips. His eyes were squinted, the sun must have been coming right at him. Callie shifted slightly until she blocked out the sun and his eyes opened again.

"It doesn't mean anything. But I love you, Benny."

He rolled his eyes at her. "Yeah, doesn't mean anything."

Shifting his weight, he flipped their positions so her back was against the ground and his hips slid between her thighs.

They both kept their shirts on, keeping their backs from scraping against the little pebbles embedded in the packed earth. Benny only bothered pulling his pants down far enough to free his cock, but Callie had the dubious honor of being pantsless in the desert.

He ended up coming in long ropes in the dirt, carefully aiming away from her.

"Okay, so, ah." Callie was in the process of re-pantsing, brushing debris off of her ass before pulling up her slacks. "You came in me before, now you're clearly not." Holy fuck was she awkward.

Benny had wandered off searching for his pistol.

"Fuck me, they don't teach Vaulties about where babies come from?"

Callie laughed. "It's about the only thing they teach us. I'll admit, I wasn't really thinking about that."

"Truth is, when you first showed up at the Tops I didn't know you and I didn't give a damn. Now I'm pretty sure you'd stick my head on a pike if I knocked you up. Now ain't the time, anyway." He had retrieved the pistol and headed back towards her.

"Never. Never is the time."

"Fine by me. I got a few already."

She wasn't sure if he was serious or not. She wasn't really sure that she wanted to know. But Benny, true to form, just kept on fucking talking.

"They're...around. But all little."

"Right." Where was a building for her to smash her head against? This was the last fucking thing she wanted to talk about. The absolute last. Her and her big fucking mouth and not putting two and two together on her own. And Benny and his random fucking tangents.

"There's a clinic, just outside the Strip. They do implants. Dr. Usanagi, I think her name is. She can arrange it so you can't get pregnant until you want to. You're really healthy, eat well, we have to be careful."

"Can you just shut up, Benny?" There was a tight fear in her chest. She did not want to address this, not now, not ever. Part of her felt like she should disclose more about what she learned about her life in the vault and condition of her birth. Then he might understand. But this wasn't the situation for it.

"Sure thing, Girlie."

The rest of the short trip back to the Strip was quiet. Which of course meant Callie actually had time to think. She tried to occupy her thoughts with lines of code rather than anything else. The more she could prep beforehand for the Chip replacement the better. Benny and Swank and Cass could storm the Lucky 38 and when the fighting was done, she could stroll in with Yes Man and get a better look at the Securitron set up. Once she knew more about the upgrade procedure she would be able to finish off the program.

When they passed the Ultra Luxe, they found Cass topless, dancing in the fountain. Her tits were kind of big in proportion to her small frame, but also sat kind of flat against her chest without a bra on. They weren't bad. Her chest was sprinkled with freckles, just like her face.

What was with people and this damn fountain? Cass was clearly drunk and happy. A male NCR soldier, also clearly drunk, pulled off his shirt and joined her in the water. Moments later they were vigorously kissing with little accuracy, mostly just kind headbutting each other and laughing.

"Are we supposed to help her?" Callie cocked her head to one side.

"She'll sober up by the time we need her."

Callie couldn't be too bothered by it.


	8. Whitelist

Forty-four hours after Callie woke up from the autodoc, the initial layers of re-writing of the Platinum Chip were 'done.' She never had access to the original, so it wasn't an issue of replication, but of prediction and imagination. Her vault lacked Securitrons, but having Yes Man as a building block was enough. Despite Benny's insistence, she hadn't really slept. He hadn't pushed the issue too far, the 48 hour time frame had been his, after all.

At first she had worked from her Pip-boy screen, but it became obvious she would be much faster at one of the terminals in the office. Packets of data were sent back and forth between the terminal and her Pip-boy, there were plenty of little programs still stored on her Pip-boy that could be adapted for the Securitron series. They weren't that different from the Mr. Handys, after all.

Forty-six hours after Callie woke up from the autodoc, she was satisfied with Yes Man's current state. She had tweaked a few settings here and there, making it ready to assume control of House's systems. The only lingering issue was the expression of preferences. There wasn't anything in its coding that suggested it should be able to dismiss direct commands. For the most part, it was as dutiful as any other robot. There wasn't time to acquire another bot and start from scratch. From the way Benny made it sound, it was a small miracle that he had even been able to recover Yes Man at all. When the Securitrons broke down, the other units would swarm in and cannibalize them, tearing them apart, presumably for scrap, and cart off their deceased robot compatriots out of sight and back into the Lucky 38. Of course, that meant the question was really why this hadn't happened to Yes Man's unit.

At forty-seven hours after waking up from the autodoc, Benny returned to the suite in leather armor and combat boots. It was nearly time. Callie had never seen him carry anything larger than a pistol, but he deposited two assault rifles on the bartop before lighting his cigarette.

Callie had been popping Mentats all along, out of sight from Benny, but he undoubtedly knew. After all, he had claimed to recognize her addict's eyes right from the beginning. People didn't just stay awake for forty-seven hours straight without some sort of aid. He could have stopped her, maybe, but he didn't even try.

He had to feign that she was more important than his plan. But that wasn't true. It couldn't be true because he let her work through the night and into the next day. He pushed food in her direction but never stuck around to watch her eat it. Fair enough, he had been running around as well, finalizing preparations.

Last night, through the open office door, she watched him sleep. It was dark in the office and even darker in the bedroom, but she could make out the features of his face from the combination of many dim glows from many different monitors. He looked innocent even though she knew he was not. The darkness hid everything.

"Do you even know how to fire a rifle?" Callie sunk into the couch, thankful to finally be off those chairs in the office that attempted to correct poor posture but in reality were just plain uncomfortable. Corrected your posture by making you happier to stand, maybe.

"Don't even start with me, Girlie." He was smiling. There was a very real chance this would end up with him dead, but it was also likely everything he had ever wanted. His climbing the ladder of power was maybe the one thing he could love unconditionally. The small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes creased, and when he leaned over to kiss her she touched just there as well.

There was an hour left, far as she could tell, and about a dozen questions she wanted answers to. Then there was about a dozen other things she wanted to tell Benny, although they were all sort of silly useless things in comparison.

When he sat down next to her, the leather of his armor creaked in protest. It was a little too tight across his chest, but Callie liked that. She also kind of wanted to tear it right off of him, but there wasn't time for that. It would be inappropriate and Callie was trying really hard to figure out how to not be such a strange one all the time. In her eyes, she had only gotten worse with people since losing Mint.

Still, while she couldn't pull his armor off, she did grab hold of one of the loose buckles and pulled him towards her.

"You're supposed to come back. If you don't, I'm going to collect on those caps House offered me."

"Eh, so you'll just switch teams if I fail, I see how it is."

"No, I'll just take credit for killing you. Because I'll be so pissed at you that I'll need the caps to hire a prostitute to fuck on your corpse, you shit."

Benny laughed like it was the best joke in the world, even though it clearly wasn't.

"And what flavor of prostitute are you getting? If it's all the same to you, get one with nice tits, no one too skinny."

"I'll get a male one, just to spite you."

"And here I was, thinking I was your exception to the rule."

Callie audibly scoffed and pushed him away.

"Any other last minute confessions? We've got a little time before I've got to grab Swank and Cass." They had drifted closer again and his hand was in her hair. It still pulled away from the flesh at her neck even though the incision was well scabbed. It would vanish any day now.

"Fuck, wasn't the last one enough? I can't believe I even said that to you." She honestly didn't believe it. The plan was to keep that bit of herself well hidden. In fact, she had said it without really understanding what it meant. It felt right, at least, to tell him that she loved him. Fuck, she would have to try it again. "I love you, Benny."

Yep, it certainly felt right even if she couldn't really explain what she meant by it. It felt warm inside her chest even though it was something she expelled rather than consumed.

"I love you too, Callie." His smile was pretty dopey, silly, a whole bunch of other childish words for childish things.

They sat together in silence for awhile. Benny was normally such a talker that the stillness struck Callie as odd. It might have been a tactic to get her to speak first, but her resolve held.

"I'll come back to you. Don't worry about that." There was something more he wanted to say, that he just had to say before leaving. It wasn't like Benny ever needed an excuse to run his mouth. "I had to try, with you. I meant what I said, that I want you now, for your own sake. It doesn't have to do with Mint. But it's not as if I can erase my past, I can't live like she never existed. I've tried to learn from my mistakes in general. If you don't stop going forward, you die."

He was utterly rambling, Callie wasn't really sure where he was going with these looping sentences and vague language. Why couldn't he just be more direct.

"I regret. I'm not some sort of sociopath." Get to the point. Their time together was slipping away. "I regret that after we got civilized, when we came to the Strip, that I didn't marry Mint. I regret it because I know it's something she wanted. And I made a mistake in asking you, because it's not something you want. I should have made a better judgement."

Callie knew she was supposed to respond to that. If she said nothing, he might just keep on talking. Yeah, that was what was going to happen. She let the lull in conversation wrap around them.

"While I should have made a better judgment, I don't regret asking you. So don't for a second think that I didn't mean it. Only, if you do change your mind, you gotta tell me. It clearly upsets you, so I won't bring it up again after this. I'll put a big, fat, useless, salvaged rock on your finger whenever you want it."

She laughed, because she had no better response to give.

"Good, that's the last thing I wanted to say. Your turn."

Over the time that had elapsed she had pressed herself against him, like he had become a piece of the furniture.

"I have something, but it's kind of big. You'll just have to come back to hear about it."

"Making promises like that means I'll have to keep my ass alive."

"Yep."

Benny worked to extricate himself from the couch and from her. His armor creaked and groaned the whole time. Once he was up, he retrieved the assault rifles, slinging them both over one shoulder. They wouldn't be super effective against the robots, but they would make due. Callie had mentioned EMP grenades to Benny yesterday, but he had already thought of that. Cass had them, what few Benny had been able to locate. Other than that, they would have to get by with conventional weapons.

"You'll know once we're ready?"

"Yes Man will. It inventoried all the Securitrons in the Lucky 38 and knows the thresholds we're looking for. We're obviously not waiting for all the Securitrons to go offline, most important is finding and eliminating House's connection to the Securitrons, that should shut them down until they get new commands from Yes Man and us."

"There always is a way to get you talking."

Callie followed him to the door, hesitating before following him out of the suite and down to the lobby. The door clicked shut behind them.

"Shit, I don't have a key."

"Oh..."

It was such a weirdly mundane thing that they both kept forgetting, that it was up to Benny to let her back in, though she was free to leave whenever she liked.

"Here," he grabbed his full set of keys from one of the zippered armor pockets and shoved them into Callie's hands. She accepted them and put them into her slacks where they bulged against the fabric. Every access point to the Tops must have been on that ring, though it wasn't overly hefty. He handed them over as if it were nothing. Then it struck her, if both he and Swank went down, this fell to her.

They held hands in the elevator traveling down. Each time they rode this elevator together, the world had been changed.

The world probably deserved better than the two of them. He was ambitious and she was talented but largely apathetic. People who were kind and who were good and were noble didn't stand a chance against them. If she had only been a good girl the residents of Vault 3 might not be dead now. But in the end she was selfish and careless and put her own happiness in front of that of others. All of that and she might not have even been happy now.

"Try and get some rest, I'm sure Yes Man can wake you when it's time."

"There's no way I'm sleeping. Besides, this shouldn't take you very long. You have the maps from Yes Man. You know where House is, you just have to reach him and disconnect him."

His hand was on the back of her neck and he pulled her towards him, bringing their lips together in the center of the lobby. Cass whistled.

Benny snickered and pulled away. Swank still hadn't arrived, but Cass stood by the door, a shotgun over one shoulder and a revolver on her hip. Callie still didn't have a good read on the other woman, only that she was kind of a drunk and kind of...slutty? But she wasn't one to talk. Cass didn't know really what was going on, other than they were off to kill a pre-war relic of a man. She didn't know about Yes Man or seizing full control of the Strip or telling the NCR to fuck right off. Benny was probably right and her allegiance could change quickly. But Cass was also small, probably easily dealt with if her loyalties did change.

"Where's Swank?"

"I'm not his ma, how would I know?"

Benny hadn't yet let go of Callie's hand. She was starting to feel the effects of exhaustion, that was for sure. Even if they did take control of the Securitrons today, she probably wouldn't have the mental capacity to finish up the upgrades tonight. The attack party could take control of the building, Yes Man could assume control of the systems, and then she would pass out.

"I'm going to watch, from this side of the street." Callie wasn't entirely sure she had meant to say that out loud.

"You could always come with us." Cass smiled, showing off her pointy incisors. "I wanna see if the rumors are true."

"I'm not necessary, besides, I've got work here. Remote support."

Cass shrugged. She looked antsy, ready to go.

Swank appeared minutes later. He carried one assault rifle and one hunting rifle for longer range shooting. Like Benny, his armor pulled too snug against his chest but hung too loose everywhere else. It seemed so rudimentary that nothing ever fit anyone. Her vault suits had always been well tailored to her frame. In fact, they were a bit too flattering for her tastes. When she had first left Goodsprings, she had worn Mitchell's wife's old suit from 21. Pretty much the first thing she had done was discard that. At the time, she had thought that it was too out of character to wear something from a vault, now it was obvious the problem was it was too in-character.

"Benny, Cass, Cal, sorry I'm late."

"Nah, you're right on time." Benny clapped him on the back and they headed out the door. No one else had been briefed on what was about to happen. If everything went well, maybe a few shots fired in front of the Lucky 38, only to take out the immediate guard bots, then the rest of the fight would be safely contained inside the building, away from the prying eyes of the Strip. She wouldn't actually see anything from across the street. But somehow she felt like the gesture of it would mean something to Benny.

It felt like they had kissed goodbye a dozen times already. But they did, again.

Callie watched them cross the courtyard and pulled her box of Mentats from her pocket. The Lucky 38 wasn't terribly far away, but far enough that a little enhanced perception would be useful. Besides, she felt as if she were ready to pass out. Undoubtedly, if she did, her sleep would be haunted.

Benny conversed with one of the guard bots, but from this distance there was no chance at all of hearing what was transpiring.

She toggled her HUD on, hoping it would give her a bit more information about what was happening. The two guard bots were still green, but she was unsure at this distance if she and Benny would be read together as a joint threat and the tics would change color for her at all.

When she went to look at her Pip-boy again, to manually switch functions over so it displayed all hostility rather than those entities personally hostile to her, she missed the first shot.

Looking up, one of the Securitrons had buckshot blasted through its screen. Cass had unloaded her shotgun into it at point blank range, decimating the screen and compromising vital mechanisms. Clearly, she had good instincts about where to fire.

It was minor chaos on the Strip, tourists and regular patrons ducking for cover and running in the opposite direction. Even the drunks that dotted the landscape were visibly shot. Inside the Strip walls were seen as an oasis from the routinized violence that most were familiar with. The conflict should have been over soon, though.

Benny shot off rounds from one of the assault rifles in quick succession; the shotgun had clearly been the more effective of the two weapons. Callie should have known that and warned them. That being said, her experience with robots generally meant mending, not destroying them.

The attack party's quick reaction time had saved them. The guard bot had barely gotten off three rounds before it was down and it's red tic faded from Callie's HUD. Benny turned and looked back at her before crossing the threshold to the Lucky 38 and disappearing from sight.

Callie hadn't brought her laser pistol with her, and she wasn't wearing armor, but she was filled with an irrational impulse to go after them. But Benny hadn't asked her. He shouldn't have had to ask, she should have just gone. But no, all she had to do was be a good girl and not have a seizure. She had to wind a few lines of code and a few more once they were inside. It wasn't as if she was a combat liability.

Fuck it. Benny was giving her what she wanted. She didn't have to play hero here, only participate in the parts she actually found fun. Twenty minutes elapsed as she sat on the steps of the Tops, studying the facade of the Lucky 38 as if it would give her a clue as to what was happening inside. The passersbys who were in a panic just minutes before resumed their day to day activities, chatting, drinking, flirting. They were enculturated to punctuations of violence. This was nothing and not one of them had been injured. She rested her head on her hands and waited.

After Yes Man was installed and she got some fucking sleep she would tell Benny about her life in the vault. Maybe she wouldn't tell everything, but she would ramble and spill stories like Benny did so easily. He would like that, appreciate it. It would be a way of letting him in and showing her appreciation of him. She would never be feminine or romantic or sweet, but she could make an effort to be open and honest.

Fuck she was so tired. She swallowed another Mentat dry.

There were two noises, pulling her in opposite directions. A whirl of mechanical punctuations approached her from behind. The doors to the Lucky 38 were thrown open, crashing against the exterior walls with a violent force.

Yes Man behind her, Benny ahead. It was ready, House was dead. And now a third noise, her Pip-boy chimed for a new message.

Three noises, and her feet pulled her forward to Benny. She didn't run, and he didn't run. They met somewhere in the middle of the road and she put her arms around his shoulders. His arms rested at her hips. He smelled like gunpowder and grease and every so slightly of iron. There was the giddiness of murder and chaos just underneath his controlled smile. He dropped the one assault rifle he still carried with him into the pavement.

There was a rip in his armor, right at the shoulder where her hand had come to rest, another one at his waist. Burn marks speckled his left side, but it hadn't gone through the protective layer.

"You need stims?"

"Already took them, now kiss me, Girlie, I'm the new master of Vegas."

She laughed and kissed him anyway, even though he was being terribly silly. She took his face between both her palms. Fuck was it great that her hands never hurt anymore. The kiss was slow and a tiny bit vulgar. Benny was undoubtedly aroused from the fight.

"What a lovely couple. Brings a tear right to my eye." No sarcasm, bots weren't capable.

Callie broke the kiss and turned back to Yes Man, who had rolled after her. "You don't have eyes, Yes Man."

"Oh."

"Come on, lets get you set up."

Callie and Benny walked side by side back into the Lucky 38, Yes Man rolling behind them.

"Wait, where is Swank?" Fear gripped her a little bit.

"Upstairs. So is Cass, figured we could use a private moment."

"Wasn't exactly private with an eavesdropping robot and half the Strip wondering what the fuck happened."

Benny just shrugged.

The interior of the Lucky 38 was now riddled with bits and pieces of robots. Blown out units lay like corpses in the lobby. Securitrons, maintenance Mr. Handys, all of them. It would have been nice if they could have saved some of these bots as well. The more units they had the better. It probably couldn't have been helped though.

"If there are some Mr. Handys left I can assign them to clean this up." Callie tripped over an arm. She hadn't been paying attention.

"Still thinking of moving in here?"

Benny, Callie, and Yes Man barely fit together in the space of the elevator. The elevator could have easily accommodated four people, maybe five, but the exaggerated 'shoulders' on the Securitrons dominated the space.

Callie idly wondered if Yes Man processed the graveyard of broken units they had waded through. It didn't have emotions, not like a person would, but it did assess information, and being faced with so many recently damaged units might have thrown up a warning flag. But no, it just faced straight ahead, its smiling face never changing, only occasionally flickering.

"No, I don't know why I said, that. I don't want to stay here. Force of habit, I guess. Offering a robot for a job."

When they reached the penthouse, Yes Man wheeled itself out first and made a beeline for House's monitor and the control panel below it.

"What the fuck!" Cass's voice. Right, she didn't know about Yes Man.

"Calm down, this one's with us." Swank assured her. Callie had never seen Swank interact with Yes Man, but she supposed that Benny would have told him.

She and Benny rounded the corner and Callie could see Cass was still on edge, gripping her shotgun and keeping it aimed on Yes Man. Yes Man, for all its credit, had no fucks to give. Robots were like that. It didn't matter if Cass freaked out on it anyway. Callie had backed up all of its programming to her Pip-boy beforehand, just in case they lost Yes Man somehow. It could be installed in any of a number of deactivated units.

"Okay, Yes Man." She was the robot wizard, after all. Benny would follow her lead with the bots, so she took it. "First priority, bring the remaining Securitrons back online. Leave in place their previous targeting parameters." In the minutes that had elapsed between House dying and Yes Man bringing the Securitrons back online, the remote units would have powered down, leaving the Strip vulnerable. The patrol bots needed to come back up as soon as possible to keep business going as usual.

"Adjust the internal bots so that the four of us are permitted to access the Lucky 38, exclude everyone else from entering the premises for now." She would remove Cass from the access list as soon as she left the room. The redhead was already on edge and hearing she wasn't an authorized user might have set her right off. "Position new guards in front of the building. Other than that, proceed with the download of the upgrade data. I need everything you can get, materials available, damage thresholds, processing power, SOPs. Whatever you can get on the MKII upgrades. Transfer all of that to my Pip-boy. Give me a ping if it runs out of space, but we should be good."

"Yes ma'am."

"Don't adjust access to your unit though, keep that as is. Just me and Benny."

"Swank, why don't you take Cass back to the Tops. She looks like she could use a drink, or ten," Benny suggested.

"What the fuck is going on here? I don't like being lied to." The shotgun was still trained on Yes Man.

"We're taking control of the Strip, that's it." Callie kept her voice clean and even. "You should have realized that."

"Yeah, yeah I guess. But fuck, we just spent half an hour blowing these robot shits to bits, now I'm supposed to trust this one."

"Don't worry, she's a wizard!" Swank laughed his exclamation. "Come on, Cass, we did our job, next step is up to Cal."

Cass lowered her weapon, but still seemed uneasy about the whole thing. "Okay, okay, let's go." She was rattled, that was for sure. If it was from the firefight or purely Yes Man's introduction, Callie couldn't be sure.

Callie noticed Swank's hand come to rest on the small of Cass's back as they made their way back to the elevator. So maybe that was back on. Or something. It wasn't like she was the intimacy expert.

"Benny, I need to sleep." She hadn't meant to admit that. She wanted to perform the upgrades first, but nothing was left in her.

"I know. Hand me your drugs."

"What?"

"You'll just be tempted to take them again to stay awake. Yes Man has some work to do, right? Go lay down in the bedroom. I'll keep an eye on him."

Callie reached into her pocket and passed her box to Benny. There were only two tabs left, anyway. She wasn't super pleased with the idea of sleeping in House's bed, but she supposed he hadn't actually slept in it for hundreds of years, so it was probably fine.

"Wait, one last thing. Yes Man." She should take care of this before she fell asleep.

"Yep."

"Are Cass and Swank out of the building?"

"Yep."

"Exclude Cass from the whitelist. Don't let her back in."

"Sure thing, Pretty Lady."

"You think that's for the best?" Benny had already settled in an armchair, propping his boots up on the glass-topped coffee table.

"We should have killed her before she left." Callie was matter of fact about the situation.

"Swank will take care of it when he's ready. Now, go. to. bed." He punctuated each word but didn't get up from the chair.

Callie didn't bother to reply, and rather just made her way to the bedroom. She was asleep just about as soon as her head hit the pillow.


	9. In case it's not clear, she's a coke addict and has been this whole time.

Callie woke still exhausted. Her head was too full of other people's lies and plans to stay asleep any longer.

When she woke it wasn't to the ceiling of the Vault, or the Mojave sky, or Benny's suite. No, right, this was House's penthouse. House had been eliminated and Yes Man had assumed control of the systems under her orders, serving Benny's plans. Her head throbbed something fierce but she willed herself up and out of bed. The world certainly wouldn't wait for her now.

Benny was gone. That was reasonable enough. She wasn't sure how long she had been out, but it had been early evening by the time Benny, Swank, and Cass eliminated House, and now the sun was down. It was different, being inside but surrounded by glass.

Yes Man's screen was off. No reason really for it to be on if no one was conversing with it. The screen was purely auxiliary. These pre-war robots came with exterior displays because it made them more expressive and accepted by those who were initially wary of incorporating bots into the home. Mr. Handys lacked them as entry-priced robots. Cheaper to manufacture without the fragile, largely useless screens.

"Yes Man."

"Pretty Lady?" Its screen came on, aglow with synthesised happiness.

"Are you done with the file transfer about the Securitron units?"

"I'm still scraping, but everything I've found so far should be on your Pip-boy."

"Where did Benny go?"

"He returned to the Tops. He had something or other to talk with Mr. Swank about."

She turned away from Yes Man and took a place in the chair she had left Benny in, likewise throwing her feet up on the coffee table. It rattled as her feet hit the glass. Scanning through the files on her Pip-boy, she realized how much useless information there really was. Well, not useless, really, under other circumstances she would have combed through all of it, absorbing as much as she could, making fine grain adjustments and optimizing paths. But there was urgency all around her. Having control of the bots was one thing, but not the only thing. Benny had proclaimed himself the new master of New Vegas, but his hold on the territory would be tenuous if the NCR decided to make a move.

Right, she had received a message earlier. The flashing letter icon on her Pip-boy screen reminded her.

It was an obituary, for House. The fuck. It was full of conceited language and grandiose, sweeping statements. Like the man itself, it was too long-winded and disconnected from reality. She couldn't even finish reading the whole mess, but skipped to the end. 'Who knows how many are even literate!' It made her a little sick that she had even wondered the same thing about Benny, underestimating education in the Wasteland. But how had she ended up with the obituary?

"Yes Man, did you get this message too? A tragedy has befallen all mankind."

"Sure did, it was set to release upon Mr. House's death, looks like. All the Securitron units would have gotten it, all the Pip-boys in range, probably other active terminals as well."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck." Callie jumped to her feet and began stalking about the room.

"Why, Pretty Lady, that's not very pretty language."

That was a whole lot of possibilities she hadn't accounted for. The Securitrons, whatever, she had control of them now. Other Pip-boys, well, there just weren't that many of them around. She hadn't seen anyone else with one since she had abandoned the exploration party. Arcade knew how to use it right away. She still didn't know what vault he had come out of. Veronica didn't have one, so the Brotherhood didn't have units to spare, if they had them at all. But if the message went out to other networked terminals, the NCR knew, they knew and they would assume a power vacuum. Sure, eventually they were sure to find out. Just she hadn't been expecting them to get notified instantaneously that House had kicked it.

They weren't ready. Callie knew that Benny ultimately wanted to keep the NCR away from the Strip and the immediate surrounding area. He wanted a buffer zone of influence. But New Vegas turned a pretty cap, that was for sure. The idea that the NCR would stay away willingly was unlikely. The best they could hope for was that the NCR hadn't anticipated House's death and weren't ready to come after the Strip yet. But they would have to make a lot of noise, and soon, to act like they were ready to repel an attack.

"Yes Man, can you reach Benny?"

"Gee, I could try to send a unit after him, but I don't think the doormen at the Tops will let my buddy in."

"Send it to the doorman, have it tell the doorman to find Benny."

"If you say so, Pretty Lady."

She had to calm down. Her attention turned back to the Securitron files. A number of units were stored in the basement of the Lucky 38. Forty-seven units were downstairs and could be upgraded locally. Another three hundred and twelve units were stored below Fortification Hill. The two batches were not networked together. Access to the Fort units had to be restored onsite. This had been a considerable cause for anxiety on House's part, having no human errand boys he trusted to send. The upgrade process would have to be done at least twice, but the same code could work for both batches.

Returning to Fortification Hill had not been on her to-do list. But it had to be her, she had to be there to oversee the process. While the same programming should work at both sites, they couldn't take the risk of something going wrong.

Next, she looked over what the physical upgrades consisted of. A missile launcher, grenade launcher, these were actually already installed in the units, the Chip simply restored access to the targeting systems. The physical upgrade was an auto repair module that had been manufactured after the initial Securitron run. The units below the Lucky 38 had these modules ready to go, they just had to be attached. The ones under Fortification Hill had the modules, but the fuel for them had never been delivered. It was in-route when the bombs fell. Shit. They would need an energy source patched in somehow.

They couldn't hold the Strip like this.

"Yes Man."

"Yeppers."

"How many Securitron units are currently deployed on the Strip?"

"Thirty-two. Thirty-three if you count me."

Not good. And to think, dozens had been taken out just today. Fuck. They needed the ones under the Fort. Maybe they would get lucky and the Legion remnants had moved on. Yeah, like these plans ever went to her advantage.

There was a chance that she could bring some of the compromised units downstairs back online. Some of them, from the looks of it, were utterly smashed to pieces. Still, it might be worth a shot if they were delayed from reaching the Fort. This was a mess. A fucking mess.

"Hey Girlie. Your welcoming party scared the shit out of my boys."

He had removed the leather armor from earlier and instead wore a dark gray suit. His hair had been styled and he looked every bit the sophisticated, unquestioned, ruler of New Vegas. He was glossy in a way she had been unaccustomed to seeing him display since their first encounter. Well, second, if killing her was the first. But that wasn't really the first time either. She nearly burst into laughter thinking back to that checkered coat that hopefully sank to the bottom of the fucking Colorado, maybe eaten by mirelurks. They could be so lucky.

"We have a problem. Er, we have many problems."

"Don't we always." He had her laser pistol with him. It hadn't even occurred to her she had been without it all this time. She took it from his hands.

"When you killed House, it released his obituary. It released his obituary to any machine that would accept it. I got it on my Pip-boy, Yes Man confirms all the Securitrons received it. The problem is, other computer terminals may have received it as well."

"NCR? Brotherhood?"

"That's what I'm worried about." Shit, she hadn't even considered the Brotherhood. They wanted their mitts on House's tech for sure. Followers too, but they weren't a military threat.

He nodded, "and you said problems, plural?"

"Okay, so second, we've only got 32 Securitrons up and active at the moment. There are about another fifty downstairs, but that's not enough to fight off the NCR. Now, there's another three hundred that are technically under our control, but they're also under Fortification Hill." Callie sat back down in the armchair, resting her elbows on her knees and leaning forward.

"Great, I was hoping never to see that shithole again."

"You and me both. Okay, and last, at least for now. I can reprogram the Securitrons, easy. Turns out they're not that different than Mr. Handys. Even if they weren't, they're awfully logical. And their weapon upgrade is super simple. I could knock it out in an hour. The problem here is the ones under Fortification Hill need a secondary power source to come up to speed. So that's got to be worked out." She took a deep breath. Really, she only ever had this many words come out at once when they were planning something and the something had bots.

"There's nothing we can do in regards to the NCR?" He lit up a cigarette, the smoke wafting over his red-rimmed eyes. Sleep was getting scarcer and scarcer.

"That message was released hours ago. If they're going to get it, they have it already." Callie was resigned to the fact they could show up at any minute. "I'll get the upgrades done for the eighty bots we've got. But then I've got to go. I have an idea about the power source. I'll know for sure if it'll work as a substitute once I'm done with the first round of upgrades here."

"I can't go," his face was dark. "The other families know. They knew when they didn't get their daily dose of Not-at-home intervention in their affairs."

"I haven't had an attack in two days. I'm fine. I managed to get along this far without you." She didn't mean for it to come across as harsh as it sounded.

"I need a couple days, to consolidate power."

"More than that, you need to be here if the NCR do show up. The bots can do the fighting, but it would be best if you manually issued commands to Yes Man. Just tell him what you want the other bots to do and they'll do it. He'll be combat ready too, as a last resort."

"Yippie!" Yes Man exclaimed, his volume restriction was temporarily overridden.

"Take Cass with you."

"What the fuck? I already told you, you already told me, she's not committed to this. You saw her earlier, she's ready to bolt."

"All the better. If the NCR show up and I've got to kill her, Swank will get testy, no matter what he claims. That's just needless drama. Take her, she'll be useful and that'll keep her out of my hair. If she has an accident, she has an accident."

Callie rolled her eyes, "you're just pawning off dirty work onto me."

Benny smiled but said nothing.

"Fine. After that, we'll figure out how to get back to Fortification Hill. I don't know what the Legion situation is like."

"No one does." He was dead on his feet and didn't want to admit it. Nor did he take one of the empty seats in the sitting room. If he sat down, he might not get back up again.

"Okay, I guess I've got to finalize work on the Chip replacement, then."

"Not so fast." He grabbed her hand and pulled her up and into his arms. "You promised me."

"I didn't realize it would only take you half-an-hour to kill a 261-year-old man. Turns out your mission wasn't very dangerous after all."

"You still promised."

Callie scowled. "Fine."

Benny sat down on the chair and pulled Callie half into his lap, half onto the armrest.

Callie narrowed her eyes and thought about what to share. There were big things and little things and she sort of felt like everything was equally important at this point. Like everything was connected in the mosaic of her life and explained everything else. Yeah, like a prism, not a mosaic. She had confused the words.

"You know we're on kind of a tight schedule here."

"And if the NCR gun us down, I'll blame it on all the time you spent stalling."

"Fine. Fine. I was an experiment."

"This was supposed to be something I didn't already know."

"Back in the Vault. I was an experiment."

"Girlie, I hate to break this to you, everyone in the vaults were experiments. Those kids from 21, they can't even go outside they're so spooked. The brother and sister, they don't even see each other anymore because they can't cross the courtyard."

"There are others, here?"

"Most of them fucked right off when House opened Vault 21, but there are a couple of kids who stayed behind. Wait," Benny stilled, "you're changing the subject."

"You were busy telling me I wasn't special enough."

"I'd never say that about you. Now, go on."

"It's kind of straightforward I guess," she scrunched her face, "Vault 3 was supposed to be a control. I've seen all the records, well, I saw them before I left. It was supposed to open once radiation levels dropped, but then it didn't. We just stayed in there. Other vaults were experiments, but we weren't supposed to be. Anyway, there were inbreeding problems. Babies were all fucked up. My parents were assigned to each other to promote genetic diversity. Then I guess I was given an assignment, I didn't want him though. I only liked girls."

Benny snickered below her, "I think you just didn't like him."

"Maybe, maybe. Once I got out of there I started noticing guys too, I guess. Anyway, I knocked him out, punched him in the face when he tried to have sex with me."

"That sure sounds like you." Benny just couldn't help but add his interjections to the story.

"I didn't know, at the time, that I was supposed to be some sort of salvation from the inbreeding problem. The Overseer was furious with me. He threatened me, smashed me up against the wall. I hurt for days. I was kind of a kid. I was kind of scared." She didn't really want to keep talking, but she didn't want to admit that she knew fear now, even if she had known it at sixteen. "I was scared of him."

Benny was rubbing small circles on her back, encouraging her to keep talking. But all of this was exhausting. It shouldn't have been. It was a very simple story, and not all that special. Benny was right, all Vaulties had been fucked with.

"When the autodoc was in me. I remembered this. About how I was assigned a husband I didn't want and told I had to breed with him, for the good of everyone else. If only I had been a good girl, maybe everyone from Vault 3 would still be alive. But I kept remembering it wrong in the autodoc. I didn't know why, at first, but the memories seemed off. But then when I woke up, I remembered. I killed the Overseer." Her mouth went dry when she said it. "When I was sixteen I was kind of fooling around with one of the medical staff, she was a little older than me. We were going at it in a supply closet and made kind of a mess." Callie smiled at the memory. "I was already working in robotics maintenance. I sent a bot to clean up, but it also swiped a bunch of chems for me while it was in there. Random stuff, I didn't know enough to specify what. We also used bots to deliver rations to the housing units. I programmed another bot to taint his food. One day he's found face first in his Sugar Bombs. It just looks like the Overseer was a junkie all along and my hands are clean. It made his little girl sick too, she was eight or nine. Saw her daddy die and couldn't finish her own breakfast. I don't know how I got away with it. I didn't care. He wouldn't scare me again."

"Of all the stories, I get Girlie's first murder."

Callie laughed it felt good to be accepted, and to speak the truth, "yeah, I guess so. Real uplifting, that one. The next Overseer took power, forgot all about me, and opened the vault a couple years later. He figured it was a more effective way to handle the inbreeding. Lot of good it did. Can't breed at all when you're dead."

"Now tell me something happy, and I'll let you get to work."

"Who says that wasn't a happy memory?" She fidgeted in his lap. Benny laughed. True to his word, he made no mention of his earlier, failed, proposal, even as Callie was fairly sure her anecdote should have conveyed why she was uncomfortable with the very concept of marriage, he didn't raise the subject.

"Fair enough, I shouldn't keep you. We've both got a lot of work to get to." He nudged her to stand up. She had creased his trousers. When he stood, she ran her fingers through his hair messing it up so it didn't sit so artificially perfect on his head.

"I like it better like this." She was proud of her work. Still, he rearranged it a bit, settling somewhere in the middle.

"Let me know when you're ready for the upgrade." He made for the elevator.

"Hm, yeah I guess I'll just have Yes Man send a bot to get you."

Benny disappeared into the elevator and she flopped back down on the chair. Shit, he still had her Mentats from earlier. Fuck. She stood back up and headed to House's bathroom. If the guy had an autodoc, he might have had some medicine lying around too. Technically Mentats were legal before the war, so it wouldn't have been shady to keep them around.

She cracked open a first aid kit with no luck, just stims, empty syringes, and band-aids. Then she tried below the sink, above the sink, and the small cabinet affixed to the opposite wall. There were a number of medicines there, including a vial with a white powder, unlabeled. Callie turned it over several times in her palm, but it wasn't as if she could identify it on her own.

Still, she carried it with her into the main room. If she hailed Benny just to bring her Mentats back he was pretty likely to be pissed at her. And thus far, he had clearly been trying to keep her habit discrete, so just wandering the Strip looking for a pack wasn't going to happen. If he trusted her judgement of robots, she would trust his judgement of people.

"Yes Man, can you do chemical analysis?"

"I can compare the properties of substances to a database and make a best guess estimation of common chemical compounds."

"Close enough, what is this?" She put the vial into Yes Man's metal fingers. It gripped the bottle as delicately as a robot could and held it in line with his visual sensor, quite a ways above its screen.

"Benzoylmethylecgonine."

"Is it cut with anything else?"

"Nope."

"Awesome, thanks, Yes Man." She took the vial from Yes Man and went back to the chair. "Er, Yes Man, we never had this conversation and you never saw me do this, okay?"

"Sure thing."

It was the same as the active ingredient as Mentats, only concentrated and without the sugar and a few other fillers. She wet her pointer finger in her mouth and popped open the top to the vial, leaving the cap on the coffee table. Placing her finger over the opening, she turned the bottle so the power fell onto her moist finger and stuck there. She pressed the finger into her mouth and against her gums until the powder dissolved away. It took several cycles of the process before she started to feel the familiar high. Sealing the bottle back, she slipped it into her slacks pocket and returned her attention to her Pip-boy and finalizing the OS upgrade.


	10. That's a Very Specific Threat

Callie was through with the finalization of the Chip replacement so quickly it was a shame Benny had even left in the first place. Then again, he seemed to be in the middle of something the last time she tracked him down. While they had quite quickly and effectively eliminated House, that didn't transfer ultimate control of the Strip to them automatically, although wielding the Securitrons surely helped. House had ruled by force of personality more than anything else. He ruled because no one, up until Benny, had considered that the chips could fall any other way. And even then, Benny had been on the Strip for years, biding his time until he believed he could take control. But really, it had been so deceptively simple in the end.

She instructed Yes Man to send another Securitron unit after Benny. She still wasn't entirely satisfied with using the Securitrons as a communication method. It meant sending messages to lots of units, instead of just one. And then the Securitrons had to be accessible by the both of them. It was a cumbersome way of communicating. If her idea would work, she would have to travel to Novac for the Securitron power source. That was nearly two days travel. The idea of being out of contact for two days, when the NCR or Brotherhood could pounce at any moment, was unsettling.

The answer was straightforward, get Benny a Pip-boy. It would probably never be as useful to him as it was to her, but using the messaging function was simple enough he'd have no trouble with it. The hard part was just finding one. The Followers probably still had Dr. Mitchell's. It had been fried, but she could repair it. The second option was to check around Vault 21. If it hadn't already been picked clean when it was converted to a tourist attraction, there should have been some units laying around in robotics. Worst case scenario, Benny said some of the kids from Vault 21 were still around the Strip, and they were less well adjusted than her. They could probably be intimidated.

Benny breezed back into the suite much sooner than she had anticipated.

"That was quick." He pulled his suit jacket off.

"I had pre-programmed most of it. It just needed a couple of tweaks. Let's head down to the basement. We'll do those units first, deploy them, then recall the already provisioned ones." She hopped up. "Yes Man, do you need to come with us?"

"Nope, I'll just be on the intercom if you need me."

Benny and Callie returned to the elevator and headed to the basement. This was as good a time as any to bring up the Pip-boy idea.

"Hey, Benny. Those 21 kids you told me about. Are they older than ten?"

"I called them kids, but I suppose they're actually about your age. Looking to make some new friends? And here I thought you were the lone wolf type."

The floors dinged by as they descended.

"I've got to look for that power source, but I don't want to be completely cut off from you here," that sounded awfully sentimental. "In case the NCR show up. I'm not satisfied with the way the Securitrons relay messages." Good save.

"You and me both, my boys get jumpy around them. We're bound to get some of them shot up if you keep sending them after me."

"I want to get a Pip-boy for you, then we can message privately."

"I can't promise I'll wear it. It looks good on you, Girlie, but it would cramp my style."

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever, I want you to have one, even if you don't wear it. We can still use it to communicate. Just have it around."

"So what, you gonna ask the Vault kids about it?"

"Yeah. There may still be some in the vault, depends on how stable their population was. It'll be a little different than mine, but it'll work fine for messaging. If not, I'll convince one of the kids to part with theirs."

Benny laughed, "You've never persuaded anyone of anything."

Callie scowled, "Got you into bed, didn't I?." She could persuade them with her laser pistol.

They reached the basement and the elevator doors slid open. Nearly the entire space was dedicated to an arena and shooting range. This was specifically to show off the capabilities of defensive mods and offensive weapons. Robot death cage, awesome.

"Hello again, Pretty Lady," Yes Man came on over the intercom. "You should be able to upload the OS updates at the terminal on your left."

Callie examined the cables attached to the back of the terminal, looking for the correct termination to attach to her Pip-boy. She pulled it up and inserted it into the side of her Pip-boy. She also pulled off a final file regarding the power source for the auto repair mod. The files transferred quickly and she detached.

"It'll take a minute to run."

"When are you leaving?" Benny loosened his tie and rolled up his shirt sleeves, exposing his tattoos. Maybe he was done for the evening. They couldn't be that lucky.

"I'll go by 21 after this. Then I'll leave for Novac in the morning."

"Novac?"

"Yeah, there's a bunch of this shit, isotope-239, just sitting in a closet in that big ass dinosaur. In these little souvenir rockets."

"Oh, you mean I should have bought that crap?"

"I just hope there's enough left. I already stole a bunch of it to power that rocket for the ghouls. I wish I had never met them."

"Story there?"

Yeah, fucking story there. Manny and his dumbass asking a favor for a favor, couldn't throw her a fucking bone. And she was too disoriented to call him on his fucking bullshit. Nearly getting herself killed multiple times, by nightkin and trigger happy zombies, all for a piece of information that really got her no closer to Benny. That dumb fuck scientist, thinking he was a zombie too and taking the lethal radiation dose on the launch pad, rather than believe he was just a poor ass excuse for a human. She watched his flesh bubble and peel away from his lily white bones; he still refused to believe. And all the Mojave thought about it afterward was that she was some goddamn savior doing this out of the goodness of her heart. She had fucking saved the economy of Novac. Woo-hoo. Fuck ghouls and fuck rockets.

"Oh, the Securitrons are ready." What a convenient redirection.

They sat back in hard metal chairs as Yes Man showed off the new upgrades. The Securitrons were a good deal more threatening now, that was for sure. The missile launcher in particular was a heavy piece of ordinance. Callie wasn't sold on the grenade launcher. In general, she wasn't sold on explosives. The auto-repair unit would be by far the best addition, though. They would lose fewer units this way, and she wouldn't have to manually repair many.

Damn, when did she get so interested in all of this? Boredom, she chalked it up to boredom.

"Yes Man, isotope-239, will that work in these Securitrons?"

"Yeppers. It's a little more dense than the originally intended fuel, but it should work just 'll pack a real punch." Yes Man's disembodied voice confirmed.

"Well, that settles it, Vault 21, Novac, profit."

"What?"

"Never mind," she was a little sheepish. Why did she always have to say such weird things?

"I've got more damage control at Gomorrah. Which is exactly how I wanted to spend my night."

Callie glanced at her Pip-boy, it was coming up on three in the morning. "They're even up?"

"The chem cocktails they swig? You better believe they're up. That being said, how are you holding up?"

"Oh, fine, I'm fine." She made no mention of the vial in her pocket. Honestly, at this point she just wanted to be left alone about it. The vial would last her quite awhile, even though it wasn't large. Without the fillers, consuming smaller quantities of the drug was much more effective. Besides, he smoked like a fucking chimney, he was in no place to judge her. Cass was apparently perpetually drunk. Swank must have had some vice he was hiding. Right? It wasn't like he was clean-cut or anything.

"Alright, I guess we're both heading out then." Benny started to roll his sleeves back down, but Callie stopped him. She ran her fingers down the twined markings, tracing the patterns. It was an intimate thing to do, something she became comfortable with. After a moment she became self-conscious, releasing his arm and letting him finish covering up. For a second time now she had tried to pull him away from his sophisticated, domesticated posturing.

He remade his tie and pulled his jacket back on. He must have been warm, even though the sun was long gone. Callie had nothing to adjust. She wasn't a person of status, even if she may have been one of reputation. Benny said goodbye to Yes Man but Callie didn't bother. They parted on the pavement, Benny heading towards Gomorrah and Callie heading up the road to 21. They kissed briefly as they split up. This power play of theirs was a series of comings and goings, separations and reunions. She came to find herself less and less looking forward to those separations.

Callie hadn't returned to a vault, any vault, since her initial departure from number 3. She stuck with the exploration party for a few weeks, collecting samples and drawing maps. A handful of them skilled in science and combat had been in the initial scouting party. Valerie, as a junior ranking doctor, had been in charge. Then there was Callie, who could both assist in research tasks and was skilled in robotics. Peter Birch was the deputy chief of security, he had come. And finally the Chen twins, Mark and Hannah. Hannah was also a security officer and Mark was a bit of a diplomat. Callie knew from her snooping about in the Overseer's records that Mark had been earmarked as candidate for Overseer when he was older. He was being groomed.

The five of them left the vault and four of them returned to the vault with findings. Callie always dallied by the entrance, refusing to go below ground again. The others would return to the surface after a few hours of resupplying and visiting family, reporting to the Overseer too, and they'd set off again into the Wasteland. This cycle continued for several weeks until one night Callie slipped away while the others were asleep. They were hours away from the vault, and the others were too timid to come looking for her.

Eight weeks later reports surfaced of the massacre. Raiders entered the vault and murdered everyone inside. Well, maybe not everyone. Maybe some of them got folded into the raiders and survived, maybe. Callie didn't run into anyone though. She never saw anyone from Vault 3 again, and she never went underground. Never scaved in one, never took Followers assignments that included vault work. It wasn't for her.

She stood outside the gaudy, sanitized entrance to 21. This was okay, she told herself, this wasn't her Vault. Her Overseer wouldn't be waiting down below to lock her into a life she never wanted. This wasn't even a Vault anymore, it was a hotel and casino, a tourist attraction for those Wastelanders who wanted to live the Vault experience. Stupid Wasters who didn't realize it was no better underground than it was above, they all had their tragedies to bear.

Stepping through the door turned out to be the worst part of it. Inside, the walls were the same, heavy and metal and solid. But it had been made up like a gift shop. It wasn't scary at all. Clean Vault suits sat on a shelf, other little knick knacks she had seen through her childhood, baubles of Vault life: tin mugs for coffee, ration packets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, those heather-gray pyjamas that she didn't wear a single night after her mother had died, preferring to sleep mostly naked.

The room was empty and the adjoining door sealed. After a few minutes a female voice came over the intercom, it was sleep addled. "Give me a sec, I'll be right up."

Callie took one of the mugs between her hands, turning it over. Vault-Tec was stamped into the bottom. She remembered that quality control hadn't been one of their strong suits. Sometimes the stamped emblem was so exaggerated that the cups would rattle on the tables because they wouldn't sit flat.

The door swung open and on the other side was a pretty blonde girl, her straight hair tied back in a ponytail and her eyes still filled with sleep. She had a large bone structure, standing maybe only an inch shorter than Callie, with wider hips and bigger breasts, but everywhere else she looked too skinny. "Can I help you, do you need a room?"

The woman took her place behind a desk and started up the terminal. There was a Pip-boy strapped to her left wrist. Excellent.

"No, ah, I don't need a room, I'm here for something else."

"Oh," she cocked her head to one side. Fuck was she pretty. Pretty in that generic sort of way that snuck up on you. Classically pretty, yeah, that was it. So obvious that it actually went kind of unnoticed. Fuck, maybe Callie needed more sleep too.

Callie fidgeted with her own ponytail, grabbing it at the top and pulling her hand down to smooth it out. Pretty girls, hell, pretty girls.

"Oh!" Her light blue eyes lit up. "You have a Pip-boy too! Are you from a Vault?"

"Yeah, that's actually what I'm here about."

The blonde started up again before Callie could even finish her statement. She spoke like she was starved for attention, although that couldn't be true if she ran the hotel. She would have seen and talked to people every day. "What vault are you from? Oh, you didn't live here, did you? I don't remember you at all. How old are you? When did you leave? Why does your Pip-boy look different? Why do you wear it on that wrist? That's wrong..."

Oh fuck people. Fuck all people everywhere.

"No, no I didn't live here, I came from another vault. Listen, I need another Pip-boy, do you have any. Maybe down in the robotics lab?"

"Oh, oh, Mr. House cleared out everything around me. Oh, he was awfully kind to let me stay though. He wanted everyone to leave, but he let me stay. Did he make you leave your Vault too? You could stay here if you want? We have the room."

"Listen, focus. I need another Pip-boy. Now, if House had them, I would know. So they have to be here. Where is your robotics lab?" Callie was ready to grab her and shake her to get some answers. Was this the level of social interaction that she was capable of too? Did other people look at her like she was looking at this sheltered, narrow-focused girl? They each had their own brand of social malfunction.

"But Mr. House sealed that part of the Vault...no one is allowed in there. I'll get in trouble, he'll kick me out!"

For fuck's sake. "Have you checked your messages? House is dead."

"What? Messages? I only get messages from my brother anymore." She looked at her wrist with confusion. Oh please, don't let this be how Callie was perceived by other people.

Callie, not knowing in the slightest how to calm the woman down with words, took hold of her left wrist and wrenched her arm towards her so she could access the blonde's Pip-boy. Flicking through screens, she reached the messages folder. SarahW, the girl's name was Sarah.

"Read this, you got it yesterday from House." She released Sarah's arm so she could look at her Pip-boy screen. Her big blue eyes got impossibly bigger as she read. From the time that elapsed, it was clear she was bothering to read the whole obituary.

At this rate, Callie wouldn't get any sleep before heading off to Novac. She fondled the vial in her pocket.

"No, no, oh no! What will happen to me? Will I have to leave?"

"That's not what I'm here about," Callie seethed through her teeth. She was two minutes away from taking the Pip-boy off of Sarah's wrist by force to just be done with it. "Benny, you know Benny, right?" She was under the impression all the Strip proprietors knew each other through House at least.

Sarah sniffled, she wasn't really crying, not yet, but she was clearly distressed. She didn't take to change well, it seemed. An affirmative nod eventually happened.

"Okay, so Benny is in charge now. And I need you to do me and Benny a solid here, and let me into the robotics lab." She spoke as if Sarah was a child. Maybe she was. Maybe that's why Benny called her a kid, even though she was probably even a couple years older than Callie. Clearly Sarah's introduction to the world above had somehow gone even worse than Callie's if she wanted to stay down here.

"You're with Benny?" In multiple meanings of the phrase, yes. Sarah's eyes lit up a bit. They were so expressive.

"Yes, I'm with Benny, and Benny and I need another Pip-boy. So you're going to let me into the robotics lab." Maybe, blissfully, she was getting somewhere.

Sarah took a set of keys and a small notebook from one of the desk drawers and pressed both against her chest.

"Benny's so nice." Stop talking, stop talking. "He used to come see me all the time. He gave me this." She held out her right wrist, a delicate little gold chain hung there, a simple thing.

Fuck this, she was murdering this bitch.

Okay, maybe not. But that jealousy flamed hard and deep and Callie tried really fucking hard not to remember her conversation with Benny earlier about procreation and fuck since when was jealousy a thing she had to deal with. Oh, right, fucking always. This was the girl who had to be fucking jealous of herself for awhile. Fuck.

Maybe she would just lock Sarah in a reactor room or something.

"He hasn't been by in weeks though, maybe months." She looked at her Pip-boy as she walked. That was a skill all Vaulties seemed to learn by the time they were eleven, walking and talking while face-first in a screen. "Six weeks, it's been."

That would have been just before Benny shot her. Her rage wasn't really dealt with though.

The two women stopped in front of a sealed door. Various bits and pieces of furniture were visible through the windows, stacked up as if for storage. Extra beds, dressers, mess hall tables, jukeboxes, everything.

Sarah opened the little notebook and examined the fine handwriting within. Her long, bony fingers danced along the keypad, entering an obnoxiously long string of numbers. Callie made out the code by the sounds produced on the keypad; five-four-zero-nine-eight-zero-three-one-zero-zero-three-four-seven-seven-three-two.

There was a little smile on Sarah's face. "I didn't want to put it in the Pip-boy. I didn't know if Mr. House could read what was on it. I didn't want him to know that I knew. But I guess it's okay now." She tucked the notebook into the top of her vault suit. Its hard corners stood out against the soft flesh of her chest.

"So," the last thing Callie wanted was for Sarah to say literally anything else. "Will you at least answer some of my questions? I've never met someone from another vault. Which number did you come from?"

"Three."

"Oh! I heard everyone from Vault 3 died. It must have been horrible."

Callie shrugged and made a noncommittal grunt.

"Why do you wear your Pip-boy on your right hand, that's weird." Well, at least her questions were moving into the inane instead of the insulting.

"I'm left-handed."

"Oh, I guess I never thought of that." She seemed genuinely puzzled by that. Callie would ask what rock she had been living under, but that was obvious.

"Do you like Benny?"

"Eh."

The little plaque in front of the door read "robotics and computing laboratory." Sarah inserted one of her keys into the lock and Callie pushed past her before she could say anything else. The lights came on automatically, revealing several deactivated Mr. Handys, various autodoc attachments, and several other labeled boxes. Two long desks held two terminals each.

"So why do you have a different Pip-boy?" Sarah stood just inside the doorway to the lab, keeping her hands to herself and fidgeting slightly.

Callie grabbed the set of keys out of Sarah's hand and used the sharpest looking one to puncture the tape on the top of one of the boxes. Dragging the key down the seam, she managed to get the first box open.

"I was the bot engineer for 3. I got a special one after the GOAT."

"But they don't come off. Mine forever and ever from the day I turn ten until the day I die."

Callie turned and faced Sarah. She was legitimately shocked. "You believe that?"

Sarah nodded. Dr. Mitchell had clearly known that was a lie. He handed his old one over without thinking twice. Callie had just assumed everyone knew and it was a lie they perpetuated once outside. Maybe 21 was an experimental vault and that was part of the experiment? To make them believe?

"Of course, the Overseer said so."

Callie dropped what she was doing and approached Sarah a bit like a predator. She grabbed the blonde's arm, again, and hit the release latch on the underside of the Pip-boy. The device loosened on Sarah's wrist to a degree that her hand could easily slide through. The completely traumatized look on Sarah's face made it worth the trouble. There was a fierce blush there too. She could feel the heat radiating off of Sarah's body. Blondie was aroused. Callie went back to inspecting the boxes.

Several minutes elapsed and Callie could feel Sarah approaching her position, slowly, cautiously. Part of her wanted to just fuck the shit out of the woman. That jealousy flared again and she both wanted to prove to Sarah that she could please her better than Benny could and that she could fuck Benny better than Sarah could. She had to stamp the impulse down. Maybe she didn't know romance, but she was pretty sure Benny wouldn't want her fucking around with other people. She knew that much about relationships.

Finally Callie located a box with three Pip-boy units. One had a smashed screen, but the other two looked outwardly functional. The first one she tried had a tab separation and half the screen was obscured, it must have been dropped. The final one flickered to life and asked for basic provisioning information. She named it "JOKER-2," unassuming a name enough. It took a couple of minutes to confirm that the unit had been properly wiped before being stored away. Everything looked good. Finally, she set up a private encrypted channel between her Pip-boy and the new one intended for Benny. The whole process took twenty minutes and Sarah stood like a good girl in silence, waiting on Callie.

"Hold out your arm, Sarah."

She stuck out her left.

"No, the other one," Sarah switched arms, offering her right. Callie tore the delicate little chain off, breaking the clasp in a petty gesture. Sarah gasped. While she wanted to toss the chain behind the boxes, she placed it gently on the desk. If Sarah really wanted to, she could mend it. If it meant that fucking much to her. Callie pushed up the sleeve on Sarah's jumpsuit and strapped the Pip-boy on. She looked comical with two Pip-boys, they were so clunky in comparison to her pale, slender arms.

Callie sent a test message from her Pip-boy to the one Sarah wore. "Did you get that?"

" From JOKER-1?"

"Killer, okay." Callie hit the release latch and slid the unit off of Sarah. "I'm done here." She didn't bother to pack things back up behind her. The other Pip-boys were as safe here as they were anywhere else. At least now she knew where to find them.

Callie didn't miss Sarah picking up the bracelet as they left the room. She could always kill Blondie another day. She was useful for now, and would ensure that 21's resources were accessible. Sarah was probably going to be loyal to them. Yeah, or something.

"You're really pretty." Sarah spoke from a step behind her. The layout of the vault may have been different than 3, but these vaults had some kind of internal logic to them, and Callie knew what direction to head through the corridors.

"You too." She answered automatically. They headed back upstairs. Sarah was clearly keen on seeing her out.

"Tell Benny I say hi. And that he should visit!" Her smile was coy. Maybe there was something confrontational there.

Callie kissed her on the cheek, really, closer to the corner of her mouth. Sarah blushed something fierce. The heat radiated from her face intensely and suddenly.

"What does the W stand for?"

"Weintraub."

"Okay, well, bye." Callie held the Pip-boy in one hand and stuck the other in her pocket as she left.

The streets of the Strip were virtually empty. As least as empty as she had ever seen it. The light pollution from the casinos and the remnants of the radioactive haze that haunted them all even now blotted out all traces of stars. It was only in the truly wild places that you could see stars. Callie sort of loved those places.

Two alert night-shifters manned the front desk at the Tops and nodded in her direction. Callie sort of blew them off. She had learned one name, that was progress. Best not to rush things.

In the empty elevator she pressed three rounds of the powder into her gums. She dissolved it towards the back of her mouth, where others were unlikely to see. This would be her last round before bed. But she had one last thing to do.

She tried the handle on the door, but it was locked. She knocked and Benny appeared in a sleeveless tee and boxers, he must have known it was her. He opened his mouth to say something, but she knocked him to the floor before the words left his lips.

Callie got up and dragged him so that his feet weren't sticking out the door, then slammed the door shut before jumping back on top of him.

"Thought you'd be too tired, Callie, I know I'm tired." He ran his hands up and down her arms.

"If you ever go near Sarah Weintraub again I will kill you and fuck her on your corpse."

"You do have a prefered, specific threat, that's for sure."

"Are you trying to start a 'Vaulties I've fucked' scrapbook?"

"No. To be fair, I didn't know you were a Vaultie when I first fucked you."

"Did you try and marry her too?"

"No."

"Did you knock her up? Does she have your fucking kid?" She was becoming frantic Oh fuck, what if she was going to have an attack. What if the autodoc hadn't fixed her afterall.

"No." He just kept rolling his hands over her, like this was a perfectly normal way to have a conversation. Maybe for Callie it was.

She tried to control her breathing, if only to preserve her own dignity. If she kept panicking like this she might start crying. Fuck no, that wasn't happening. Regaining control of herself, Callie released Benny and stood. She stalked off to the bedroom, leaving the second Pip-boy on the floor.

Benny was hot on her heels and she allowed him to pin her down to the bed in a show of strength. She feigned annoyance, but let it go easily.

"You're mine and I'm yours," he growled into her ear, unhooking her belt and moving to the button on her slacks. "How fucking clear do I have to make this to you."

He pulled down her pants and up her shirt, and she didn't mind in the slightest. Her slacks got caught on her shoes and Benny had to rip them down with force. The vial flew from her pocket and rolled under the bed. If Benny noticed, he said nothing.

She spread her legs as he climbed on top of her. Her original intention might have been to beat the shit out of him, but that had gone astray at some point. She had already proven that she could hold him down, dominate him. Now her concerns were somewhere else, that he would turn to a good girl-like the buxom Sarah who was just as socially inept but oh so sweet and innocent. Sarah was every girl she hadn't wanted to be, that she was incapable of being, in the Vault. Trusting, soft, pretty, and obedient. The Overseer said girls like that made the world go round. Couldn't Callie be a girl like that?

Benny kissed the corners of her eyes as he slid into her.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," his chant of affection rang in her ears.

Maybe she was stupid for believing it from his lips, but she had already crossed that threshold. She shifted her weight and rolled on top of him, riding him until she came, biting at his neck where the black of his tattoos ended. When he was close he pushed her off clumsily and came into his hand.

The last pulses of her high faded.


	11. Chapter 11

For a second time, Callie dreamed of Benny with a hole in his chest. It cut him right down the middle, bisecting his tattooed torso, the wound red, puffy, and angry against his fair skin. He appeared even paler than he was in reality, as if from blood loss or lack of sun exposure. While the wound itself was red and bloody, all torn up edges, everything that spilled from it was green. Lines of code, this time distinctly from the Securitron OS upgrade Callie had written herself. The code spilled out of Benny's chest and into the Mojave dirt. It sank into the ground and the excess pooled at his feet, an emerald ocean before him. Purple, blue, green, these colors stood so vividly in her imagination. Purple dress, blue eyes, green code.

Callie approached him, but she was different. Her stomach was distended, like she was pregnant. She wore a white dress that she recognized as Valerie's wedding dress from back in Vault 3. Even though the ceremony was just five minutes in front of the Overseer, Valerie had made herself up like a bride from a 200 year old wedding magazine. The magazine was already cut up in pieces by other women who had come before them. It sat on Valerie's desk at the clinic, tucked in between her medical textbooks and patient records. A dress and lipstick and silk flowers, all of it had been arranged. Callie had nearly vomited when she had seen the doctor all made up, crude fake flowers in her hands and a smile on her coral-painted lips.

But here she was in her own dream in Valerie's white dress, carrying Benny's child inside her. Not his first, though. She would never be his first anything. After the autodoc, she knew she hadn't had sex with a man before Benny. She wouldn't tell him that, though. His ego was big enough already.

In the fog of her dream, she knelt before Benny's mangled chest and drank green-tinged code from his vibrant crimson wounds. She drank his code-blood and it lit up the Pip-boy on her arm. Excess spilled down her face in quick moving streams, staining Valerie's dress as it rolled over her swollen breasts and stomach. Lewd.

Callie woke with a start, but not enough of one to unsettle Benny, who still slept beside her. His hair had gotten longer since they first met and when it wasn't gelled back it stuck in all manner of odd angles. Sweeping it out of his forehead, Callie scrutinized his face in the dim glow of the bedroom. It was never really dark. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were softer when he was relaxed. His eyelashes were incredibly thick. The black of his tattoos stopped at the most convenient place for a collared shirt to hide them, as if he always knew he was bound for a more respectable life. It was only a matter of time until the world caught up with him and his big plans.

Slipping from the bed, she gathered up her clothes from the night before. It hadn't been her intention to give in so easily, she was supposed to be mad at him. But why? For fucking someone else before he even ever knew her? That was just irrational. He had clearly fucked a lot of women between Mint and her, it was something like five or six years, right? One day Mint died at 21 and when she woke up again she was 22. Really though, much more time had elapsed. Callie died at 22 and woke up another woman entirely. Fucking hell.

The vial of benzoylmethylecgonine wasn't in her slacks pocket. Fuck. In the darkness of the room she crawled on her hands and knees, trying to find where it had gone. She had it in the elevator...right, she had heard it fall from her pocket when Benny stripped her pants off. It had to be here.

"Girlie..." Benny's voice was still full of sleep. He breathed the words in a quiet sort of way.

"Go back to sleep, you need it," Callie urged from her position on the floor. They both needed it, they were running on fumes and they knew it. But they couldn't stop now.

He reached over to his bedside drawer, not bothering to sit up, and pulled out a tin of Mentats, tossing them in her general direction and grunting. The pills clinked against the packaging. "You said you'd quit, but I guess it can't be helped."

The tin was full and rattled in her hand. Of course he knew, he always knew. Maybe not about the little glass bottle she had found in House's bathroom, but he knew she wasn't ready to give this up, not yet. At the pace they were going, she'd burn out without it.

She didn't thank him, but stood and made her way to the bathroom. She only took one of the pills and swallowed it down with warm tap water. To think after all the destruction this world had endured, water, hot and cold, could still run through taps. Some places weren't as lucky, but she had never really known scarcity herself.

With her vision sharpening, she made a plan for the rest of the morning. The Pip-boy read 10:23, so not much of a morning left. Still, she at least wanted to make some progress towards Novac today. Supplies had to be gathered and she still needed to talk to Cass. Plus she had to figure out some unfortunate accident for the redhead to befall if the time came. They could get lucky and maybe Cass would forget the whole thing, chalking it up to being too drunk last night. Not much chance of that, actually, she had seemed stone sober at the time of the attack.

Callie adjusted her ponytail and headed back to the bedroom. Benny was sitting up now and he had the Pip-boy from Vault 21 in his hands. His eyes were narrowed at the dark, empty screen as he randomly turned the dials.

"Here, let me show you." She climbed back into bed next to him and took the Pip-boy from his hands. "So this model will only turn on when you wear it, so let me show you how to get it off and on first. There's this latch, here," she flipped the unit over to show him where it was, a small, unassuming thing. "Pull the latch and it'll loosen up and you can slide your hand through. I know you don't want to wear it, so just put it on and take it off as you need it."

Benny nodded and reached back over to the bedside table for his cigarette pack. Lighting one, he made sure to blow the smoke away from Callie instead of towards her. Individual vices for them both. He was running on nicotine. Narcotics would get them though this.

"Most everyone wears it on their off-hand, so you can use your dominant one for typing, so here, gimme your left and we'll put it on."

Obediently, Benny stuck out his left arm and Callie slid on the Pip-boy over his hand.

"It's heavy, you wear this all the time, Girlie, all this extra weight?"

"You get used to it. Mine's even heavier than this one, I think. I dunno, maybe it's why I'm no good with a rifle. You have to use both hands for that." As she spoke she twisted the screen so it faced the right way. "Okay, where that latch is, just grab it and squeeze and it'll make the bio-seal between you and the Pip-boy.

He audibly inhaled when the seal was formed, there was some pinching involved. But he was tough, he'd get used to it.

"What is all this shit in my eyes?" Callie could see his irises rapidly changing focus, trying to accommodate for having the HUD in his immediate field of vision. Benny probably wasn't used to having something so close to his face.

"Oh, you don't need that," she took his arm and expertly moved through menus. "I'll turn it off." He relaxed when the HUD was disabled. It didn't seem on when she had tried it on Sarah, but then again she had never tried attaching two Pip-boys to one person at the same time.

"Do you see all that shit all the time? It's overwhelming. How do you even know where to look?" Benny rubbed his eyes now that Callie had released his arm.

"Like I said you get used to it. I've been wearing once since I was ten. And no, I don't have the HUD up all the time, just when I need it."

Benny smirked and took another drag. "Does it give you x-ray vision? Can you see through people's clothes?"

"No, but it can detect heat sources through walls and shit. Or tell me how far I am from my destination, things like that. Anyway, there's really only one thing you need to know." She had never expected Benny to take to the device's other, infinitely cooler, functions.

"Here, let's do it this way," Benny grabbed her shoulder and manipulated her so she sat between his legs, her back resting against his naked chest and his arms slung around her waist. He put his cigarette down in the ashtray on the bedside table, letting it flicker out. "I can see what you're doing with me now." He held the Pip-boy so it was eye level with Callie.

"Okay, so this is the messages folder," she pointed to the correct icon, "use the dial so it's highlighted on the screen."

It took some adjusting on both their parts, but Benny brought his right hand around to work the knob and after overshooting the first time, the correct icon was highlighted.

"Now, push the knob down and the folder will open." The test item from JOKER-1 was the only thing in the folder. "I've set your Pip-boy up so it'll send messages to me and only me."

"Don't trust me, eh? I'm not completely technologically inept."

"In the Vault this one guy sent a sext meant for his girlfriend to everyone in his address book, including his wife and son. He came at me screaming to delete it from everyone's local units. Like I could or would want to do that."

"Sext?"

"Er...like a message with all this sex stuff he wanted to do to her. It was really graphic." She scrunched her face up, remembering the vulgar descriptions. Somehow it was way worse than all the pornography she had watched.

"Well I know what I'm doing with this from now on." Benny squeezed her a bit with his right arm, pressing her more firmly against his chest.

"So highlight a message, click on it and it'll open. Click again and you can send a message back to me. A keyboard will come up and you can just press the letters on the screen to type a message. Same layout as a computer keyboard. Try it."

"Okay, don't look, it'll be a surprise."

Callie humored him and closed her eyes, letting her head rest against his shoulder. Even though they were about the same height, Benny's torso was longer than hers, most of her height was in her legs. So, seated like this she actually felt a little bit small, a little bit feminine. She was soothed by the rise and fall of Benny's chest as he breathed. His heartbeat was slow and steady; he was calm. Maybe she would admit to him that she liked this, liked being with him when they didn't have to be anyone else. Maybe.

The tones of an incoming message shook her from her daydreams and she opened her eyes.

"So let's see." Her message folder still had the note Benny sent her before through Yes Man and House's obituary, then an unread message from JOKER-2.

i love you make sure you come back to me

She was thankful that she wasn't facing him when her face started feeling hot. Knowing Benny though, he could tell without seeing her face.

"Yeah you got the hang of it. Just remember that it won't work if you don't put it on. You won't be able to see if I replied or anything. And if you get in trouble, message me as soon as you can and I'll come back."

"Nothing's going to happen I can't handle. And you said it yourself, we need those Securitrons under Fortification Hill." His hand was warm against her stomach. "Why Jokers, Girlie?"

"Because we're the wild cards in this power game," her voice trailed off a bit at the end.

"That's more poetic than you usually are."

"You know the kind of supplies I like," Callie abruptly changed the subject. "Get me six days worth, just in case. Should only take about four though. For me and Cass both, I guess. I've got to talk to her about coming. She might not even say yes. She might be too spooked already."

"Nah, she thinks you're hot shit. She wants to see you shoot up things in the flesh. The whole Mojave has been talking about you and you don't even know it."

"I don't like the radio." It was true, she didn't. They only played a handful of songs on repeat and they never shut up about her after her first trip to Novac, spewing lies about her. It hadn't occurred to her before now that they probably talked about Caesar's demise too. Had anyone seen them do that? And now House was dead too. And she had been at the scene each time. She and Benny. Wild cards.

Benny reached for the latch to take the Pip-boy off. She stopped him.

"Wait, one last thing." She navigated to the empty audio logs folder on Benny's Pip-boy and took a deep breath. Yeah, she wanted to do this. Recording..."I love you, Benny," ...stop recording. She could feel him smiling against the skin on her shoulder. "You can play that back, whenever you want."

"Let me make one." She nodded and went for the right screen on her Pip-boy. The folder was empty even though she knew there should be files there.

"Okay, on three. One, two," recording. "I love you too, Callie," stop recording. It ran straight down her spine when he said it.

They went about getting ready for yet another series of separations. Benny removed the Pip-boy and stored it in Yes Man's office. It still seemed like the robot's office even though it wasn't there anymore. They had left it installed at the 38. Callie was confident that it was in control of the systems there and it was meticulously backed up on her Pip-boy as well, a dormant beast of a thing.

She pulled on the one pair of jeans from her drawer and a black tshirt that hung too long on her. In the end she tucked the hem into her jeans and put the leather belt she had on over it. Her laser pistol had been dropped in the sitting room last night when she tackled Benny in her jealous rage. This morning, she couldn't figure out why she had been quite that angry at Sarah. It wasn't her fault, she didn't know about her and Benny. And she had made it quite clear that she hadn't seen Benny at all since he had shot her. Still, Callie wasn't sure she'd feel quite the same if she was confronted with that perfect image of Vault femininity again.

Right, there was that familiar spite again. Good old spite.

Dressed for the day, Callie left to find Cass while Benny was still in the shower. She knew Cass was on the 11th floor but not which room. Once she made it to the correct floor she grabbed a random Chairman by the collar and asked after 'the drunk redhead with the shotgun' and she was directed to 1121. The boy looked scared shitless and she wasn't sure if it was because of her or because of Cass.

First, she knocked politely. When no answer came, she turned the knob. Physical privacy wasn't something that they were taught in the Vault, not really. Callie supposed she shouldn't be surprised when she found Cass still asleep, a bottle of whiskey on the dresser, and a man who was definitely not Swank in bed with her.

"Excuse me, I gotta talk to Cass." For some reason it seemed even more awkward at this point to just leave and say nothing rather than ask the questions she had come here for. She was also kind of a little frozen with embarrassment and she just sort of talked without thinking.

The guy, who was maybe a solid 15 years younger than Cass, lifted his white-blonde head and looked right at Callie. He didn't look terrified of her, so at least he wasn't a Chairman. Small fucking miracles. From the way Benny talked, Swank was still holding a candle for Cass, even if she had other ideas. Those Boot Riders boys had shit taste in women. That was for sure.

Nameless guy gathered up his things, he still had his pants on, and shuffled out of the room. Cass raised her head at the disturbance and was all smiles when she saw who it was. She didn't appear adversely affected by last night's festivities. No signs of dehydration or other hangover symptoms. She looked bright, alive. Her skin was downright glowing.

Cass hopped out of bed, unashamed that she was naked from the waist up, and looked around for her shirt. Just like her companion, she was wearing pants under the covers.

"Well, well, if it isn't the Angel of the Wastes. What can I do for you?"

Callie winced, "Don't call me that, Callie is fine." Everyone wanted to call her something else around here. For all she knew one day someone would yell out "Juan" and she'd respond to that too.

"Sure thing, Callie. So to what do I owe the pleasure." She had managed to locate last night's shirt and buttoned it up the front, covering her breasts. Callie hadn't realized that she'd been staring. So many freckles.

"I've got to go to Novac and I could use some backup. You up for it?" Callie tried her very best not to sound strained or insincere. It was a little favor Benny was asking her for, nothing big really. Just get Cass out of the Strip for awhile, and she was going anyway. It was up to her if Cass returned or not.

The redhead was already pulling on her boots, "You bet. This place is starting to give me cabin fever. Not used to all this swank shit."

Callie didn't know if she meant 'swank' as an adjective or proper noun.

"Well, Benny's getting together our supplies. Meet me downstairs in like," she checked her Pip-boy, "an hour I guess." They would be leaving in the hottest part of the day, but it couldn't be helped. As long as they stayed well hydrated, it should be fine.

Before leaving, Callie wanted to swing by Lucky 38 one last time to check in on Yes Man. She already had her laser in her waistband, so she just rode the elevator down and crossed the street to the other casino. Not even bothering to head upstairs, she paged Yes Man on the intercom.

"Yes Man, I'm heading to Novac, I should be back in four days."

"I'll miss you, Pretty Lady."

Callie smiled, that used to mean something to her, when bots responded like people. She had a Mr. Handy that she kept in the lab that knew her birthday, the date of her mother's death, the anniversary of her being assigned as robotics engineer. It would respond with pre-programmed pleasantries that felt lovely and real. Yes Man felt a little like that sometimes.

"You feel secure, Yes Man?"

"Yeppers," its words reverberated in the empty lobby, bouncing off the glassware.

"If you need to reach me, ask Benny, he can hail me even if I'm off the relay network." Yes Man's custom OS was sophisticated enough that it should be able to detect failures in its own system. If something was wrong with it, it should know to call for help. That was a small consolation with leaving her pet project behind. Even though Benny and Ortal had started on Yes Man long before she was in the picture, she felt oddly responsible for the thing it had become.

"Thanks a lot, Pretty Lady."

She didn't say goodbye to it, as usual.

Back in Benny's suite, the things she had requested were laid out on the bed, along with two packs to sort things in. There was also a handwritten note from Benny, asking her to wait until 1pm before leaving, he would meet her in the lobby between appointments to see her off. Obviously, he hadn't deemed it necessary to use the Pip-boy to contact her.

She set about sorting items, splitting the rations in two sets. Shotgun shells were for Cass, obviously, E-cells for her. Water split evenly, she held on to a few more stimpaks than she allocated to Cass. Mentats for her. The vial was sitting with the Mentats and Callie was slightly ashamed for it. Even though the active ingredient, the thing that produced the high feeling and quenched her addiction, was the same, there was something vulgar about the powder. It was so vulgar that she couldn't name it, this thing that she was addicted to. It was Mentats or benzoylmethylecgonine. The once-legal incarnation or the strict chemical name. She wouldn't call it what it was, though she had read about it in pre-war texts. It was the same reason why it occurred to her a man like House might keep some around for fun.

Still, she stuck the vial in her pack.

There was leather armor for her, which she pulled on over her jeans and tshirt, working the buckles and straps into place. It was the same set of pants she had before, only it had been washed and the zipper fixed. The top to the armor was different, it fit alright though. She transferred to vial from her pack to her pocket, keep it closer to herself.

She swung both packs over her left shoulder and left the suite, locking the door behind her. She still didn't have her own key. Benny had left the door open, with Yes Man gone there was less of a risk of anything befalling them, but it was still wasn't a cautious thing to do.

12:56, this was it.

Cass was downstairs, dressed in the same combat armor from yesterday. It was too big on her. Her shotgun was across her back and today she appeared to have some of her own explosives with her. They were probably over-geared for the trip to Novac, but there could be an ambush waiting for them anywhere. Cass had a huge grin on her face with those pointy canines sticking below the line of her lip.

"Here, supplies." Callie tossed Cass her pack and the redhead shoved her explosives into the bag along with a bottle of whiskey. Great, this trip was going to be just great.

"So, we gonna get moving?" Cass was just itching to go. Swank wasn't behind the front desk, but Callie wondered if that was why Cass was on edge down here.

Callie tried not to seem so anxious or attached. "Waiting on Benny, he's going to see us off."

Those little teeth made an appearance again.

The two women waited in silence until Benny appeared, coming through the front entrance to the Tops a few minutes late. He was neatly pressed again. This version of Benny, with his hair all in place and his Tribal markings covered, was a still strange thing, even now. Should she have to get domesticated eventually too?

His hand was at the back of her neck and his lips on hers right away. Callie could hear Cass snicker. That woman had a reaction for fucking everything. He smiled when they parted and on reflex she smiled back.

"I'll be back as soon as I can." Her throat felt dry. All these strange half-goodbyes. One time, it would be the last one. The real goodbye. She didn't know if it would be this one. They could never know for sure.

Silly, sentimental things.

"We can both take care of ourselves. It'll be fine." Benny always was good with words, these ones seemed right. This was working because they could both change the world around them, even if they were sometimes failing at changing each other. Wild cards. Sometimes. Sometimes they succeeded in changing each other.

"Remember to check for messages."

Benny nodded and let her go. Cass trotted dutifully behind her into the dry desert air.


	12. I'll cleverly title this later.

Cass whistled. She whistled all the goddamn time. If she wasn't eating or drinking, she was whistling. This madness had to stop. Other ways to keep her mouth occupied, right. Don't go there, Callie. They just had to keep walking.

Nope, nope, had to stop the whistling. Where were the rumored roving bands of Legionnaires when you needed them? 

"Could you stop that?" Callie had reached her breaking point.

Cass tilted her head, "stop what?"

"The whistling, it's kind of grating." Callie just had to live with herself coming across as an asshole.

"It's a big world out here, Callie, and nothing to fill it all up. We could listen to the radio? Your computer gets it, doesn't it?"

She shook her head, "No, absolutely not. The last thing I want is to listen to the radio."

"We could talk. Swank said you were a little quiet, but this is ridiculous." 

Fuck if it would stop the whistling, okay, she would try it. Maybe she could talk to Cass like she used to talk to the bots back in the vault. She was just going to disassemble Cass in the end, anyway, like her bots, Cass would have no one to tell.

"Okay, what do you want to talk about," cautious at first, maybe let Cass do most of the talking.

"Where are you from?"

"You know that already, Swank must have told you."

Cass shrugged, "We're starting with the easy questions and working our way up."

"Fine. Fine. I'm from Vault 3. Yes, you thought they were all dead. Well, I'm not dead." Always having to give the same answers was tedious. She was already regretting this.

"What do you like?"

"What the hell kind of question is that?"

"A friendly one? Damn are you tense." Cass had a habit of smiling through every response. The longer they were in the sun the redder her face got, the freckles becoming less noticeable. Callie knew her freckles only got darker in comparison to her skin. She never burnt.

"No, I mean it, how do I answer that? What do you like?"

"I like whiskey, cards, Brahmin calves when they're real little and gangly, all heads and legs. Damn adorable. I like dancing when I've been drinking with boys who don't know any better. I like traveling and sleeping under the stars, but I know it's not safe. I like having enough caps to know where my next meal is coming from and I like grown-ass men in NCR uniforms. See, things you like."

Callie breathed. This would be good for her, right? Learning how to talk to people in a controlled environment like this. She reminded herself that Cass would be dead in a couple of days and anything she said would die with her. If she embarrassed herself terribly, she could just remember that she was going to reduce Cass to a pile of ash.

"I like robots, and energy weapons, and sometimes picking locks..."

"That won't do. You're listing things you're good at, not things you like."

"I like things I'm good at." It was true.

"Try again." Cass drank from an already open bottle of water. A little spilled down her neck.

"Okay." She was stuck. This question was really hard. She panicked a bit at how hard it was, this friendly question. "I like traveling too. And the sky. I saw the sky for the first time when I was 18 and it was so big and open and perfect."

"Good, that's a good start. What else?"

"I like Fancy Lads Snack Cakes. And uh..." She couldn't say Mentats or pornography so she was drawing a blank. "Math?"

Cass was exasperated with her, "that's a skill again."

"Okay, I like the smell left behind when a laser shot turns someone into ash?" From the look of horror on Cass's face, she should have gone with pornography. "Pornography! I like porn."

Cass was laughing so hard she doubled over, choking on the water she just drank and dropping the bottle. They had to stop walking for a minute so Cass could compose herself. Callie wanted to die she was so embarrassed. Who cared about killing Cass later, she wanted to die right the fuck now. But if she was dead, she wouldn’t be around to kill Cass.

"Oh man, you are awesome." Cass slapped her on the back and they resumed walking.

Still embarrassed, Callie stuck her hands in the pockets of her leather armor. "I like Benny."

"Yeah, like that wasn't obvious." Cass kicked the little pebbles that littered the path. "Guy sure looks at you like you're an angel. You two got it bad. Is it true he turned you into a corpse?"

Callie was only half paying attention at this point. "Hmm, yeah. It feels like a long time ago now."

"Dunno how you could do it. Guy put a bullet in me I'd pay him back tenfold."

"It just works for us." Callie was getting uncomfortable again. Cass must have picked up on it. Luckily she had other things to discuss. Maybe this had all just been a ploy to get to the topic Cass really wanted to get at.

"You gotta do something for me when we get back."

Always with the favors. Was there some neon sign hanging above her head that just screamed problem solver? No, she was fucking sure there wasn't. Then again, Cass was helping her out here. Then again, Cass wasn't going to make it out of this trip alive. Callie just kept on walking, eyes straight on ahead.

"You gotta get Swank off my case. Screw around with that guy a couple of times and suddenly he thinks you owe him something, pff. I got other problems too, but you can help me with this one. You got both those boys wrapped around your little finger." For every step Callie took, Cass needed a step and a half. If Callie quickened the pace enough, maybe the redhead would be so out of breath she couldn't speak or whistle. "Have you given him a spin?"

"What? Swank? No, fuck no. I'm not like that," Callie glowered.

"Not like what?" It hadn't occurred to Callie that Cass might be fucking with her.

"I'm with Benny. I wouldn't just sleep around like that." Except she sort of did, back in the Vault. But she was never really with any of those women. They all dropped her as dead weight once they decided, or had decided for them, who they were going to marry.

"Ah, so you're not a slut. Not like me, eh? You judging me?"

"No, it's not that." 

It was totally that. Swank was good and sweet and noble. A better person than Benny or her or Cass. And here Cass was, just toying with him. Callie may have not had the best record with affection, but at least she was trying. Even though she thought about revenge-fucking Sarah Weintraub she didn't actually revenge-fuck Sarah Weintraub. So there was that.

Callie saw red at the corner of her eye. Just a dash of it standing out against the beige of the desert.

"Shit. Legion." Callie grabbed Cass by the arm and jerked her behind a rock outcropping. 

There were three of them, following at a distance from the east, running alongside them, just up the ridge. They couldn't have been there for long. Either that or they had been exceptionally talented at tailing them. Now they would suspect they had been spotted. Good. Callie needed to draw them out, into laser range. If she was good enough, she'd ash them before they got into spear-chucking range. Cass and her shotgun would become useful if they did cross into closer quarters.

"I didn't see them." See them or not, Cass was crouched down as well, keeping her head low.

Callie reached into her pack and produced her tin. She swallowed down the pill with a swig from Cass's almost-empty water bottle. Water splashed down her hand. Mentally, she counted down the seconds until her vision would be enhanced. 

"Hey, hey. What was that, are you some sort of junkie?" Cass kept her voice low, although it was largely unnecessary at this distance. They were only half-hiding anyway

"Not now, Cass," Callie spat. Unholstering her laser pistol, Callie raised her body above the rock high enough that she would be spotted. The landscape was largely without vegetation here and there would be fewer places for the Legionaries to hide. Now that she knew they were trolling about, she was sure to pick them out. If they were dumb enough, she could eliminate all three.

One made the mistake of peaking above the ridge that had been concealing them. This could be a standoff, but Callie was hesitant to lose her advantage. "Cass, walk."

"What? Fuck no. You want me to be some sort of target?" Yes, exactly.

"They're too far away to hit you with their spears. We need them to approach, I'll get them long before they can even hit you." She might let them hit her anyway.

Cass didn't seem too happy with that plan, but she stood anyway, taking a deep breath as she did. "You're the hero here."

Callie still didn't like the sound of that.

The pace Cass adopted was an irregular, stilted one. She looked all around her like the Legion brutes would jump right out in front of her. Both hands gripped her shotgun like it too. Callie focused in on the area she had last seen the head pop up. There, just there, one of them stirred and started his descent. Then he signaled to the others and they forgot all about being sneaky, instead rushing towards Cass far too quickly.

Well, this would make things interesting.

Callie lined up her first shot. She didn't need to use the sights. She was sure of her positioning and angle. The nearest one was by far the fastest, and might be troublesome at close range. Two rounds went off, the first where the quick Legionnaire stood and then a second where Callie anticipated he might dodge. The first connected with his upper chest. It didn't crit though and he was still standing. Shots three and four hit him in the lower torso and he went down.

Cass advanced on the corpse and fired her shotgun at close range just to make sure he was dead. The body practically jumped at the impact. With the other two Legionaries approaching, Cass looked for cover herself. The remaining men were gaining on her.

Laser pistols had absolutely massive clips compared to conventional weapons and Callie was able to land seven shots in the bigger of the two remaining men. The seventh hit was critical and all that was left behind was that sweet smelling ash Callie had admitted to liking just minutes before.

Got the fastest, got the biggest, the one in the middle though had just entered throwing range on Cass and hurled his spear in Her direction. The small woman was agile though and managed to dodge the spear, instead it sank harmlessly into the dirt.

"You said something about picking them off before they got to me!" Cass was angry, but not too angry. Adrenaline had kicked in for them both.

The Legionnaire looked up and spotted Callie, she was clearly the intended target for this attack. Cass was just a bonus target. Underprepared, or something, he only had one more spear to throw. As it left his hands Callie got a little cocky and shot it clear out of the sky.

There was a long, impressed sounding whistle before the powerful thud of the shotgun. The Legionnaire fell forward into the dirt and Callie rushed towards him. By the time she reached him, he was already trying to get back on in a feet. She stamped her boot in the middle of his back, pinning him down to the ground. The cries he let out were pitiful. The mighty Caesar's Legion, indeed. Callie lined up her shot and his body disintegrated below her boot when the laser hit his skull.

"Fuck me, you are that good." Cass was making her way over to Callie's position. She was all smiles again as she reloaded her shotgun. "That trick with the spear, something else."

"Takes practice I guess." Callie wiped her foot against the ground, removing the traces of ash that got on it when the Legionare disintegrated. Rarely was it worth checking Legion corpses for tradables. They never had chems or ammo, light stuff that was easily traded. As they continued walking, Cass grabbed the spear that had landed in the dirt and clipped it to her back along with her shotgun.

"Do you know how to use that?" Callie was actually, mildly, interested in the answer.

"Nah, Mom was a Tribal, but she didn't teach me anything like that. It's for practice." Cass was beaming.

"I don't think it'll work with a shotgun, Cass. Your accuracy and perception have got to be really good."

"Got my pistol too. Reckon that'll work. And I'll have you know my accuracy is excellent."

"I've actually never done that before, so, I mean..." At least this wasn't a completely embarrassing topic of conversation. Only a mildly embarrassing topic of conversation. "Besides, laser cuts through the air different than conventional weapons."

"First you say practice, then you say you've never done it before? Make up your damn mind." There wasn't even a hint of malice in Cass's voice.

Callie scrunched her face, "It's the same as shooting crows, I guess. Calculate the distance and velocity...I guess it's easier than crows because once a spear is released it won't change trajectory much."

They managed to stay on the topic of shooting shit until it was time to make camp for the night. It would take a whole day of travel tomorrow to reach Novac. Then it was a simple in-and-out job to lift the rockets. Callie didn't even plan on staying the night in town. They'd fill up both packs with as much isotope as they could once the shopkeeper went to bed and then get a couple of miles out of the settlement before anyone knew what was going on. Sound plan. A half day to ditch Cass somewhere then and a day and a half to travel back to the Strip. Then she would be golden.

"Hey, so about earlier," Cass was eating directly from a barely-warm can of pork-n-beans. Turned out she chewed with her mouth open. "Really though, are you a chem junkie? I wouldn't have pegged you for one."

Callie leaned back against a low, flat rock. Her back was killing her for some reason. Not wanting to answer Cass, she chose to say nothing.

"Hey!" Cass threw a pebble in her direction, as if Callie hadn't heard the question.

"They just help in combat." She wasn't a great liar, so she picked a response that had truth to it.

Cass resumed eating, shoving forkfuls into her mouth. Kept her quiet, at least. When the rest of the food on the fire was actually heated, Callie started on her own dinner. The silence pleased her.

"They're bad for your heart, you know?" Not a moment after Cass had finished eating and she was already talking again.

"And drinking is bad for your liver." What was with Cass judging her when drunkenness was downright rampant. Drunkenness and smoking both.

"So another question. I had reports about my caravans, you know the ones that got trashed?"

Callie didn't know but nodded in assent, the story would end faster this way.

"The reports were that the drivers on my caravans were burned to ash. Swank and I passed one getting those books for you," Cass actually sounded a little bit sad. Like she had lost something important. "Some of the cargo was ash too. Not burned, more like, disintegrated. When I had first heard ash I assumed burned. But that wasn't it. Do you think it could have been lasers?"

"With a big enough laser you can ash anything, eventually," Callie shrugged. "It either takes a bunch of shots or some luck though. You saw, it won't ash them one-hundred percent of the time. Maybe some special gun or something could." 

She was just finishing up her meal and was anxious to sleep through the first shift. Cass was pensive for a moment and Callie took the opportunity to climb into her bedroll for the night. If Cass had any decency, she'd let her sleep her shift straight though.

It was a chime that woke Callie. Her body protested, it was too soon for her to wake. At first she assumed it was her Pip-boy, maybe Benny was in trouble already. But when she finally got her eyes open she realized the noise was a bit off for it to be her Pip-boy. Cass was already on her feet and had her pistol aimed out towards the Wastes. Someone or something was there.

Sleeping out in the open like this was a mistake. The fire had attracted attention and now someone was on them. Callie grabbed her laser pistol and listened. Anything from the darkness was better than nothing at this point. Nothing couldn't be pinpointed.

There was a gentle crack of dried grass underfoot, then a thrill of several chimes. Eyebot. They were eyebot noises. Or a very similar robot, something small and simple. But an eyebot wouldn't make noises along the ground like that. At least now she knew where to aim. Cass was fixated on the same point.

Careful, careful. The fire already gave away their position, there was nothing to lose in speaking to each other. Whoever or whatever it was, already knew they were there.

"It's a bot, and something else. The bot will be floating in the air, no feet. Don't damage the bot too much if you can avoid it. I want it." She did want it. An eyebot was like, ten times better than Cass. Having already worked on ED-E, another one wouldn't take her long at all to reimage. 

"Why has it always got to be robots? Fuck me." Cass kept her eyes ahead as she spoke.

"Hey! Person with the adorable robot! Hand it over and I won't kill you!" Callie wanted to get back to sleep. She wasn't being entirely irrational, she still kept low to the ground, made herself a small target if the person in the distance started shooting. But no one had the element of surprise anymore, so it wasn't worth faking.

"No! He's my adorable robot!" A female voice came from the dark, just as defiant as Callie's. Only now did Callie think that they might be attracting other, nastier, things to their location. Well, shit. Shit. She knew that voice.

"Veronica?" That two-timing, Brotherhood bastard.

"Mint?" Veronica should have known that was not her name, even though they were only just on the edges of unraveling who she was when Callie assumed her betrayal and ditched her a Old Mormon Fort.

"ED-E?" Callie’s heart skipped at the thought of the troublesome bot.

Another set of electric trills, a bit like a purr, came in response. The eyebot floated nonchalantly into the range of the campfire light and hovered sweetly. It was different than she had left it. Before it had been covered in paint and grime and stickers. It had character. Now it looked bright and shiny and new. Someone had upgraded it.

“Do I need to be lowering my weapon here or not?” Seeing ED-E and hearing Veronica’s voice had been so overwhelming that Callie had forgotten about Cass for a moment. She was still poised to attack if necessary, keeping her pistol aimed on ED-E.

Callie certainly wasn’t ready to trust Veronica outright. Hell, she still couldn’t even see the Scribe through the darkness. Her HUD was off too, since she had been asleep, so she couldn’t say exactly where Veronica was standing.

“I know them,” it wasn’t really an answer, but Cass relaxed just a little.

“I’m coming now!” Veronica’s voice was quite close. Another few seconds and a shimmer passed into the space gently lit by the fire. Cass reacted and drew her weapon again, but didn’t shoot. A soft click and Veronica disabled her stealth boy, rendering herself visible. 

“Mint, Mint I thought I had lost you forever!” She looked the same, her hood covering her hair and her pale skin flushed a little from either happiness or exertion. Straight rows of white teeth peeked out from behind her pink lips when she spoke. She came forward and embraced Callie, wrapping her arms around her waist. Callie tensed at the contact. Their touch had been much more intimate than this before. Arguably, it had been Callie who craved affection from the other woman at the time. Wanting the scribe was much more in line with the person she was now than it was with what she knew of Mint. But it wasn’t the betrayal alone that made the contact odd. Veronica felt foreign all around her.

“Are you okay? I thought you had died and the Followers were experimenting on your body and wouldn’t tell me…” Veronica gripped Callie’s upper arms. She had pulled away a bit in order to get a good look at Callie’s face in the firelight. ED-E still hummed nearby, probably still appraising Cass. 

That the Followers were experimenting on her? No, what bullshit. Callie had been a specimen to Veronica. She may have been at least somewhat responsible for the occurrence and duration of her seizures. Veronica had been there when she started having attacks and sat by her side through, arguably, the worst period of her illness. It sure seemed like after she ditched Veronica, her attacks were less frequent, at least for awhile.

Callie drew her own laser pistol at Veronica and Cass mimicked the action, forgetting about ED-E for a moment. “Keep yours on the robot, Cass.” 

If ED-E’s companion protocol was attached to Veronica’s biosignature, it wouldn’t matter that she had been the one to repair the bot and tend to it first. It would attack if Veronica was threatened. It was a small miracle that it hadn’t started attacking yet. ED-E had always itched for a fight, even if Callie didn’t want it.

“Mint,” Veronica looked genuinely concerned at this turn of events. “What’s wrong?”

“You, you’re what’s wrong,” Callie hissed. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice? All the notes that you kept for the Brotherhood? You knew what was wrong with me and you said nothing.” She was trying not to yell, not to scream, not to throw her fists in Veronica’s face. Honestly, she was exhausted. With everything.

“What are you talking about?” Veronica had both hands in front of her chest, her palms facing out in a sign of submission, she wanted to talk even if Callie wanted to fight.

“Was I just an assignment to you?” Not crying, but almost. Veronica had been her first ‘friend’ after waking up from death. And then to be betrayed like that; and to now fake innocence like this. It was just too much.

“Listen, I only ever knew as much as you did,” she paused and bit her lip. “I know a little more now. But I didn’t know about...everything. So it was you, who killed Dr. Henry up in Jacobstown? I couldn’t believe it, it seemed too much to hope for that you were still alive.”

“What do you mean you know a little more now?” Veronica may have been spinning lies, but they were so pretty.

“We knew Dr. Henry had been looking for a body, he had been from some years. He had experimental tech we were interested in...acquiring. But that wasn’t part of my job for the family. I only found out about it after I went back home. I told one of my friends about you and it occurred to him that you might be that body Henry had been waiting for. I went up to Jacobstown after that, and Henry was already dead. There was no one around to ask. Just supermutants, you know? I stealthed in and stealthed out.” Such pretty, comforting words. Fuck did Callie want to believe her. 

There were still unanswered questions. “You were writing, all the time, in this brown notebook.”

Veronica blushed slightly. “It’s just a diary, so yeah, there’s stuff about you I guess. And no, you can’t see it. Well,” she reached into her pack and produced the notebook in question, “you can see the outside I guess. But not what I wrote.” She pulled the book back to her chest and crossed her arms over it, coddling it.

Callie’s shoulders relaxed. This all seemed plausible. Maybe too much. But Veronica’s voice was so sweet and kind to her ears. Veronica was pretty and good with robots and didn’t whistle. It was weird to think she wanted Veronica back with her, but she did.

“Why are you here now?”

“I didn’t have any more leads on you until today. Like you’ve been hiding out. I continued my supply runs for my family. But there was a Legion troop a couple miles back, one of them ashed. Not that many energy weapons users outside of us, and I knew it wasn’t one of our groups, they’ve mostly been called back home. So, I tracked you to here.”

“But why are you here now, why come after me?” Veronica’s previous statement explained how she had found Callie, but not why she was looking for her.

“I-I, I thought we were friends. I missed you. I thought you were dead,” her voice was so sad, tender even. Their friendship had meant something to V.

Callie really didn’t have more questions, or more snide statements to make. “Okay.” That about summed it up. Finally, she put her arms around Veronica and hugged her back, setting her head at the junction of V’s shoulder and neck. 

“Do I get an introduction now?” Cass had been both patient and had kept her weapon trained on ED-E.

“Veronica, this is Cass, Cass, Veronica,” Callie gestured back and forth in introducing the two women. “The robot is ED-E. It’s awesome. This means we can all sleep, it’ll watch. That is, if you’re staying, V? If not, I’m still taking the bot.”

Laughing, perfect teeth exposed, Veronica responded, “Of course I’m staying. You’re the best tour guide in all the Mojave, Mint.”

“Callie,” she corrected.

“You sure this time?” Veronica didn’t have a bedroll with her, she just sat in front of the fire, the light of the flames flickering against her skin.

Absolutely she was sure. “Yes, it’s Callie, for sure.” Being haunted by another woman’s ghost was becoming more tolerable, now that she was surely gone.


End file.
